


Paradise

by ladyeternal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Plug, Angelcest, Angelic Grace, Bondage, Chain Sex, D/s themes, Double Penetration, Food Sex, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Grace Kink, Grace-Powered Orgasms, M/M, Multiple Pairings, Multiple Partners, Partner Swapping, Team Free Love, Threesome - M/M/M, Voyeurism, Wincest - Freeform, Wing Kink, hammock!slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-19
Updated: 2011-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:40:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4337819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyeternal/pseuds/ladyeternal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when you put four sexy, virile men (or two men and two angels) with apocalypse-frayed nerves on a secluded island?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Paradise - Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiptoe39](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiptoe39/gifts).



> Written for [](http://team-free-love.livejournal.com/profile)[team_free_love](http://team-free-love.livejournal.com/)’s [2010 Secret Lover Exchange](http://team-free-love.livejournal.com/113044.html). My recipient was [tiptoe39](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tiptoe39/pseuds/tiptoe39) and I combined her “Send Team Free Will on Vacation” & “King for a Night” prompts. Beta’d by [morganoconner](http://archiveofourown.org/users/morganoconner/pseuds/morganoconner), who is love. ^_^
> 
> Disclaimer: If I owned Supernatural, certain events would NEVER have happened and there would be unabashed pr0n. I own little more than a tabby that gets destructive when he feels ignored and am only playing with this world for my own amusement and the free entertainment of others.

~ooooOOOoooo~

 

It wasn’t the aborted Apocalypse that caused it.

It wasn’t the relentless pace building up to it, grinding every hope, every fiber of being, every spark of energy down into the numb ache of exhaustion and despair, that caused it.

It wasn’t even the clean up afterwards, feeling driven to atone for what had been wrought by their Destiny even when the last threshold of endurance had been passed long ago, that did it.

Ultimately, it was the combination of all these and more. Trust shattered and rebuilt in the midst of a war most people didn’t even know was being fought. Passion and vulnerability and insecurity and possessiveness all spiked with healthy doses of desperation and adrenaline. Four people boxed into close quarters and even closer circumstances, all pushing too hard for too long with no rest and even less ability to recognize that their considerable tempers were wearing thinner than spring ice.

Dean and Sam were fighting, snapping at one another out of pure frustration with each other’s obstinacy. The bickering had been going on for nearly an hour straight, and both Castiel and Gabriel had been flatly informed to ‘stay the Hell out of it’ when they tried to intercede. Cas was getting more irritated by the second, his lapis eyes dark and dangerously narrow, his posture beneath the trench coat coiling like a panther about to spring between two dueling elk. The tension in the room was so thick it could be cut with a knife and too many barbs were trading back and forth between the Winchesters. They were at each other’s throats over trivialities, pushing their angels away rather than let them provide a buffer until tempers could cool.

Gabriel had watched one family tear itself apart under the strain of what was Meant To Be. He wasn’t about to do it again.

“ **Enough!** ”

One word slamming through the room with the force of a crashing meteor. Even Castiel startled, eyes widening as Dean and Sam both fell silent and turned to focus on the archangel who’d shot to his feet and was bristling with something between exasperation and fury. “Just shut up,” Gabriel snarled. “The both of you.”

“Gabriel…” Sam half turned from Dean, one hand rising to reach for his lover.

“Just…” Gabriel took a deep breath and steadied himself. “Oh, fuck it.”

No one had time to react before Gabriel snapped his fingers.

* * *

Dean stumbled where he landed, dropping onto all fours, hands sinking into the soft… “Sand?”

“We’re on a beach,” Sam replied. Dean glanced up as he righted himself to see Sam sitting a few feet away, stripping off his jacket. “Gabriel?”

“Right here, gorgeous.” The archangel was perched on a nearby dune, watching with some amusement as Castiel’s customarily grave expression shifted into subtle consternation. “You didn’t think I was staying behind, did you?”

“Where are we?” Dean snapped. “What the Hell do you think you’re doing; we were in the middle of-”

“Bitching at each other like a pair of little girls,” Gabriel interrupted. “And if you’d listened to me or Cas for half a minute, we could have told you that the spirit activity was nothing more than some egregore. A little too much excess energy being given form by a few too many people who saw things they’d rather not have. It’s taken care of.”

“Still don’t explain what we’re doing here,” Dean snapped. “Or where ‘here’ is.”

“My own little island getaway,” Gabriel replied expansively, gesturing with one arm. “Picturesque little splotch of sand and sun and green with every amenity you could want. Decided it’d be the perfect place to take a much needed vacation.”

“So you just snapped us along?” Sam blinked at his lover. “Without even talking to us about it first?”

“Eh, you’d’ve argued over the idea for another six months if I’d gone that route.” Gabriel’s expression went from carefree to serious in a half-second. “We’re overdue; more than, really. You two’ve been all-go-no-stop since Dean pulled you outta Stanford. It’s time to take a breather and let other hunters handle things for a while.”

Dean’s face darkened like a gathering storm. “Like Hell. Those poor bastards don’t have half our resources. They’ll get killed tryin’ to do what we do and ain’t nobody resurrecting them.”

“They’re good enough or they’re living on luck,” Gabriel shot back, hopping off the dune and moving into Dean’s space. “Either way, they aren’t your responsibility. They’re their own. You two knuckleheads, for better or worse, are ours, and you’re gonna take a break before you wind up broken. Period.”

“The Hell we are,” Dean snapped. He’d never really had any fear of going toe to toe with the archangel. Not even after they’d found out he was an archangel. “Cas, get us outta here.”

Silence followed the order, undercut by the soft rhythmic rush of water lapping across sand. “No.” Dean turned, incredulous, an almost-betrayed expression on his face. “Gabriel is right, Dean. We have all been moving from one battle to the next for far too long. Even angelic endurance has its limits, and you are both human. It is affecting us all: physically and mentally. It will never be a good time to step away, but it has become a necessity.”

Gabriel grinned. “Even all-work-no-play Castiel agrees. Team Free Will is taking a vacation.”

* * *

When Gabriel talked about amenities, he’d been understating things. Considerably.

The island itself wasn’t overlarge; perhaps a few square miles in all; with sand as white as snow that caught the sun and water almost as blue as Castiel’s eyes stretching as far as the eye could see in any direction. The interior was carpeted with lush green vegetation and dotted with arching canopies of tropical shade trees heavy with fruit. Rope hammocks were cunningly tucked away in secluded corners where hibiscus and amaryllis and flowers neither human could name bloomed in riots of color, with stone pathways stretching from the house and winding throughout.

Gabriel’s home on the island was as large as most of the motels Sam and Dean had ever stayed in over the course of their lives, with columned porticos and gabled balconies and long glass-paneled walls that afforded spectacular panoramic views of the entire island. The rooms were sprawling, open spaces, filled with luxuriantly overstuffed furniture, hardwood floors topped with plush rugs so soft that they felt like clouds. Comfort and elegance suffused the design, with charms or geodes or personal items that Gabriel had either been given or collected over the centuries artfully placed wherever the eye landed.

“Not bad,” Dean murmured, aimless steps carrying him through the great room overlooking the western beach. “I’da thought any place of yours’d be a little…”

“Incoherent?” Sam supplied helpfully. He knew his angel’s mercurial moods and even more eclectic tastes quite well by now.

Gabriel’s lips pouted almost instantly, and the hurt look on his face had Sam immediately by his side, drawing the archangel into an apologetic kiss that erased any traces of it. Gabriel let out a pleased little hum against Sam’s lips, easily wrapping up around Sam’s torso and letting Sam lift him into an even tighter embrace.

“Dude… right here,” Dean reminded his brother acidly.

Sam broke the kiss, thrilling quietly to the way Gabriel’s mouth yearned at his for a moment and refusing to set the archangel down. “Don’t watch if it makes you squeamish, jerk.”

“Bitch.” Dean grinned at his brother, inwardly astonished at the foreign feel of the expression. Even in quiet moments with Cas, there had been preciously little laughter in the last few years for any of them. _Maybe Gabriel’s right… maybe some time out would be a good plan…_ He watched Gabriel wriggle against Sam and Sam’s breath shallow, and fought down a girly sigh of contentment as his fingers reached out to brush Castiel’s. Sam was happy with the minx of an angel, and it did Dean good to see it. He’d worried too often that Sam would never recover from Jessica’s loss on a romantic level. Sexually, his brother had gotten back on the horse, but Sam deserved to have a ‘forever’ with someone, and it looked like Gabriel was fitting the bill nicely.

Not that he’d ever admit it to the Trickster/angel… at least, not in front of witnesses.

“So…” he said, just a shade too loud so as to break the spell his brother and the archangel were weaving on each other. “We’re pretty much here for a while?”

“That’s right, Deano.” Gabriel grinned at him past Sam. “Surf, sand and sex; best vacation there is. Couple things to put out there, and then it’s time to let your hair down.” Gripping Sam’s biceps, he dropped a quick kiss to Sam’s lips, untangled his legs from Sam’s waist and hopped down. “First off, this place is totally human-proofed. Like baby-proofing, but with fewer locks on the cabinetry. There are no poisonous critters or predators or inedible berries. You can walk around buck naked if you want to, swim in the ocean as far out as your arms will take you; no rip tides or undertows or anything that will damage those fragile hides of yours.

“If you’re wandering around and get lost, just yell for me; I’ll be able to hear you anywhere on the island. I’ve got the place wired up, so to speak, so you can go anywhere and do anything you want. Place puts that ‘Room of Requirement’ thing to shame, too, courtesy of my awesome Trickster skills. You wanna go scuba diving? You’ll find the stuff at exactly your specs. Anything you want to eat, just think about it and the ingredient’s’ll be in the kitchen. Want equals have around here.”

“Sounds decadent.” The soft observation from Castiel startled Dean, and it struck him that his angel had been… well, he couldn’t remember a time when Cas had been all that talkative, but taciturn was describing his angel mildly these days. _Yeah… we could all use a break._

“That’s the point, bro.” Gabriel’s eyes glowed, his elfin face lit with excitement. “Be naughty; do what feels good. No rules, no missions… just distractions.”

Sam caught the almost furtive hesitation, as if Gabriel wanted to propose something but was reluctant to do so. Holding back wasn’t the angel’s M.O. “Gabriel? Is there something else?”

He hesitated again. It was the first time in centuries… millennia… that Gabriel wanted something he wasn’t sure he could have. Even Sam, in the end, had been a safe enough bet that he’d get somewhere eventually. But this… he couldn’t predict how this would be received, and it was a want that had been niggling around in the back of his mind since he’d realized precisely how close of quarters the Winchester brothers usually lived in. “Just something I thought… but it’s not important. We’re here to have a good time, Sammy; no worries, remember?”

“Just spit it out, man,” Dean grumpled. “I ain’t spending this entire vacation wondering what else you’re plotting.”

One glance at Sam, who was all bright encouraging eyes, and Gabriel went for it. “No rules… no exclusivity. No couples. Just four healthy, sexually active guys having a good time however… with whoever… they want.”

Sam’s jaw was hanging open. Dean stared like Gabriel had just announced he was a demon on every alternating Tuesday. Castiel was the only one who found his voice. “You are suggesting that we ignore our commitments to our mates… that we indulge in sexual congress with no respect for our bonds to one another.”

“I’m suggesting those bonds won’t be weakened or damaged by suspending the norm for a while,” Gabriel retorted stiffly. Castiel wasn’t the one he’d been expecting to get resistance from. “That instead of splitting off and just being couples the entire time we’re here, we take down the fences and see what happens. Nobody does anything they don’t want, but we don’t worry about causing permanent trust issues with our lovers by indulging a spark. We’re in each other’s back pockets damn near 24-7-365, Castiel; you can’t tell me there haven’t been any.”

“None I would acknowledge.” Castiel’s jaw set stubbornly.

It set off alarms in Gabriel’s head. There was more to this, but pushing wouldn’t help. “Okay… but if we take the rings off, so to speak, and Dean did indulge, would you hold it against him?”

It was quiet for too long. Both Winchesters were sitting on the overstuffed sofa, watching the exchange: Dean unsure what reply he wanted Cas to make, Sam trying to ignore the stab of hurt that he shouldn’t have felt when Castiel denied being attracted to anyone but Dean.

Gabriel finally gave ground. “It doesn’t matter; I’d decided not to put it out there, and I shouldn’t have. Don’t give it another thought. C’mon, Sam.” With a snap, Dean and Castiel were alone in the room.

For another moment, they were silent. Dean looked up at Castiel. “So… sex vacation. One of his better ideas, gotta admit.”

“Dean…”

“Oh, c’mere.” Dean stood and pulled Castiel in, sliding the trench from Castiel’s shoulders in a smooth, practiced motion. “Only one here’s me.”

Castiel’s answering groan was lost in Dean’s lips as he wound his fingers into the short waves of Dean’s hair.

By the time they were on the floor, naked and entwined, sunlight streaming warm and golden through the huge windows, Dean had reduced Castiel’s world to the sharp edge of teeth and a nimble slick tongue and the deep flex of lube-wet fingers brushing his prostate and stretching his muscles, the angel’s only thought centered on begging his hunter for more.

Gentle. Even at their fiercest, they made love, an undercurrent of tenderness in their most ferocious abandon. Dean idly wondered what it would take to bring out something more raw, like the angel could be when he fought, when he was angry. To have Castiel take him dirty and hard and fast until Dean was sundered from himself.

Castiel whimpered and Dean slid deep, pushing away thoughts of being taken and wrapping himself in the feel of his angel. Because this was everything: the way his angel arched up into him, muscles clenching greedily as if to pull Dean in and never let him leave. The way the angel’s head fell back, lolling helplessly as pleasure washed through him when Dean sank as far as he could go. The sight of heavy-lidded lapis eyes fluttering open, locking with his own, seeing right up into the hunter’s soul and refusing to look away…

Dean’s hips stuttered as Castiel reached up, drawing him down for a fervent kiss, his cadence becoming almost frantic. Cas clung to him, thighs tight on his waist and heels digging hard as Dean braced and sank deeper, harder, his whole body shaking from the need to get Cas there first… to feel his angel splinter apart around him… his left arm protested when he shifted, Cas strangling on a groan as the angle changed, and the Dean got a hand in and caught Castiel’s erection with almost rough, jerky strokes, not bothering to match rhythm of hand and hips, just needing to see Cas come…

A hoarse shout of Dean’s name and Castiel gave Dean what he wanted, arching and writhing under Dean’s body, every muscle taut and eyes rolled back and breath panting shallow in his throat. Dean barely lasted a stroke before the deep rippling clutch of tight heat finished him off, and he almost let out a sob of relief as he flooded into his lover.

In the beginning, Dean had tried not to collapse into Cas after sex. Other lovers would have found it uncomfortable, or considered it rude, and habits against snuggling died hard. But Cas liked his weight, liked the contact after lovemaking stripped him bare, and Dean privately thrilled at the idea of someone who could take all of him without complaint.

He refused to talk to or about the part of him that could spend the rest of his life nestled with Castiel, soaking up the way the angel’s sleek, naked body fitted so perfectly against the lean planes of his own and the way tiny, chaste little kisses seemed perfectly natural to both of them when they were safe and entwined.

Just the constant strain of day-to-day life had become difficult for everyone on Team Free Will, and physical intimacy, both sexual and merely affectionate, had suffered as a result. They needed to reconnect; all of them.

It made Dean almost wonder just how crazy Gabriel’s outlandish suggestion really was.

Castiel smiled as Dean nuzzled his jaw, hands lingering over Dean’s flushed skin. “Sex vacation,” Castiel rumbled, soft and somehow wondering. “Gabriel has been away from Heaven for a very long time, to think of it.”

“Good idea, though.” Dean shifted, bracing on his forearms to look at Castiel’s face. “You like this… anytime we feel like it… Heaven wasn’t anywhere near this good.” Those lapis eyes narrowed and a disbelieving eyebrow cocked. Dean laughed. “You’re picking up the Trickster’s expressions, angel. You’ll be imitating Sam’s bitchfaces next.” The mention of his brother had those blue eyes darkening, and Dean decided to press his luck. “It’s Sam, isn’t it? The reason you got your feathers ruffled over what Gabriel suggested.”

“I didn’t hear you leaping up to support the idea,” Castiel countered. Dean’s own eyebrow arched and Castiel sighed. “I have no problem with Sam. I believe we established some time ago that casual intercourse is not something I’m suited for, beloved, and what Gabriel suggested seems like the epitome of meaningless sex.”

Nothing was supposed to surprise Dean anymore, least of all about himself. He’d hunted supernatural creatures for nearly twenty years, been part of an ancient Abrahamic prophecy, gone to Heaven and Hell and come back again, fallen into bed with the angel that saved his soul and stopped an Apocalypse.

The surge of fraternal protective anger at Castiel’s statement was so fierce that it shocked Dean to the core. “You’re tellin’ me that after everything we’ve been through… after all the shit we’ve done together and all the times Gabriel or Sam pulled both of our asses outta the fire that they don’t mean anything to you? That you don’t think you and I mean anything to them?”

Dean had backed away, out of the cuddle without realizing it, sitting up and staring angrily at Castiel. The angel sat up, crossing his legs and looking thoroughly confused. “No… but I don’t care for them as I do for you. Don’t most humans consider sex without love meaningless?”

He looked so earnest, so thoroughly confused; Dean could almost forget that sometimes his angel got lost in the complexity of human interaction. The contradictions built into the human heart. He sighed, resigning himself to a chick moment and gathered his thoughts. He was really the worst person possible to have to explain things like this.

“Meaningless sex is… it’s two decently put-together bodies getting sweaty and horizontal for the pure sake of just getting off and nobody’s expecting to see the other again.” He paused for a moment, an afterthought crossing his mind that he privately blamed the archangel for. “Sometimes more than two… but that’s not the point. Point is… if you care about somebody: respect, friendship, any of that… then it can’t really be meaningless. I’ve had a _lot_ of meaningless sex in my life; I know the difference. And do I really have to tell you about how there’s more than one way to love somebody?” Unable to stop, Dean reached out and touched Castiel’s cheek, running his thumb over the kiss-swollen lower lip. “You?”

Castiel leaned into Dean’s touch, smiling ruefully. He hadn’t let himself really acknowledge the closeness he’d come to feel with Sam over the years; the younger Winchester was the beloved of an archangel, and there was a burden of guilt between them that Castiel didn’t feel worthy to be absolved of. Couldn’t tell Dean about, for fear of his beloved’s reaction. It was a chain around his heart, his cross to bear.

But Dean knew him too well, and was more insightful than anyone gave him credit for. “Go talk to Sam,” Dean urged gently. “Whatever’s going on in your head, just get it out and deal with it. You gotta deal with your shit, whether we’re even gonna think about taking Gabriel up on his crazy-assed idea or not. Apocalypse taught me that much.”

A rare, somewhat sardonic smile crossed Castiel’s face at that, and he reached out to brush light fingers down Dean’s cheek. “Does it appeal to you, Dean?”

_I hate it when he does that._ For a long moment, Dean remained silent. He could still smell Cas on his skin, though the angel had dealt with the residual stickiness almost immediately. He’d found it easier to get Dean to snuggle that way, and Dean had wholeheartedly approved when it became a habit.

He didn’t want to think about sex with someone else… anyone else… when Castiel’s love marks were still fresh and the angel was sitting there so damn tempting and naked. But Cas wanted an answer, and his angel took stubborn to several entirely new levels.

“If it did…” he started slowly. “If I said that there’ve been times when I’ve envied Sammy just a little… when I’ve thought about what you’d look like on your knees for my brother, or Gabriel for you… If I said it might not be such an insane idea and could be kinda fun… would you say yes just because I wanted to do it?”

“No.” Castiel’s eyes were the same bright, piercing blue they’d been when Dean first met him on this plane of reality, when the angel had gazed up and through him and solemnly declared that he knew Dean didn’t believe he’d been worth saving from Hell. “But I would re-examine my opposition to it, if doing it would make you happy.”

Before Dean even realized he was moving, his hand snaked out and slid around Castiel’s neck, yanking him up across Dean’s lap. Their lips slammed together, all teeth and ferocity and open need, until Castiel’s hands fisted in Dean’s hair and he whimpered into Dean’s mouth.

“I love you,” Dean breathed fiercely, warm words against warmer lips. “And I don’t care what you decide. I don’t care what the deal is between you and Sam. I forgave you a long time ago for all the bullshit those dicks in Heaven made you do and all the secrets you kept and all the smiting you dished out that I probably deserved but resented you for anyway. Hell, Cas: I forgave Sammy for Ruby; what wouldn’t I forgive you for? Whatever the deal is with you two, just fix it and don’t worry about what I’ll think. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

Compassion unasked. Grace undeserved. Love unexpected, but without reservation.

This had been worthy dying for. Still was. And Gabriel had been right: nothing could damage that.

“If Sam is as forgiving as you, beloved,” Castiel told his lover slowly, “then perhaps Gabriel’s suggestion would be an… interesting way to spend the time.”

Dean grinned at him. “Then go find out, angel. I’ll be right here.”

A gentle kiss; an endearment in Enochian; and then Castiel was gone from his arms in a flutter of wings, his boxers gone with him but the rest of his clothing still scattered where it had fallen with Dean’s. Dean chuckled softly, gathered their clothes, and then went to find a shower.


	2. Paradise - Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see Part One for warnings, disclaimers and notes.

~ooooOOOoooo~

Sam was swimming when Castiel found them, his long, muscled frame cutting clean strokes through the blue water of the cay. Gabriel was circling his lover, cutting around and beneath his hunter like a dolphin at play, and Sam would dive to get away from him, then come up laughing and giving chase when Gabriel shot away.

Castiel wondered idly if Gabriel had always been like this, so free and easy and open in his human mannerisms, or if he’d had to learn it, as Castiel was now, eking out his mortal behaviors one glacial inch at a time. He wondered if he would ever learn to be more like his elder brother, to play and flirt and blend so easily into human life. And, more importantly to Castiel, if it was possible to do so during Dean’s lifetime.

Gabriel went under with a shout. Sam’s head bobbed up seconds later, a grin pulling across his lips. The ArchHerald of God splashed up, spluttering, wet hair plastered to his elfin face, and Sam laughed out loud at the sight. The moment dissolved into shoves and splashes in the surf, shouts and snickers and indistinct words that didn’t really matter.

It was an image of pure joy.

And Gabriel’s suggestion, startling as it was and off-putting as it had sounded, suddenly felt right. Joy bred joy. Light fed light. What Gabriel proposed meant sharing what they had found in each other, letting sparks catch rather than smothering them, rekindling banked fires and allowing new flames to help them thrive.

For Dean’s sake… for the love of the man he loved more than his Father… Castiel was determined to try.

A tug, and he was naked in the surf between the two frolicking lovers. Sam at his front, balanced on the balls of his feet on the sandy floor of the cay and looking somehow shy. Gabriel was against his back, brazier-hot and held up by will alone, his grace almost triumphant as it slotted against Castiel’s. “Was hoping you’d change your mind, bro.”

“I need to talk to Sam,” Castiel murmured, uncertain of how to respond to the flush of heat that the low thrum of Gabriel’s voice sent through him. His grace brushed and pressed against his brother’s, curious and promising and open, and the archangel’s tangled into it, a strung note of pleasure and understanding and love cascading through Castiel’s senses… a sensation Castiel hadn’t felt in a _very_ long time.

Sam’s hazel eyes were bright and wide; Castiel could smell the pheromones that indicated human arousal pumping from the hunter in thick waves. _The sight of Gabriel and I together is arousing him…_

“How ‘bout you go check on Dean?” Sam suggested to Gabriel, eyes never leaving Castiel’s face. “Is that okay with you, Cas?”

Hesitation. A brief flare of uncertainty. Gabriel was all bright, warm grace and love behind him… encouraging… waiting… “Yes… Gabriel may euphemistically ‘check on’ Dean.”

A shout for joy in his grace, and Gabriel vanished with a rustle of water and wings.

Alone, without Gabriel’s vivid, reassuring presence, Castiel gazed up at Sam uncertain how to proceed. Things between he and Dean had just sort’ve… happened; a natural result, he presumed, of two people gravitating towards each other for too long. But Castiel had distanced himself from Sam since the beginning, and he had no idea how to heal the breach. No idea how to even start.

As it happened, Sam Winchester was apparently a master at starting awkward conversations. “Why’d you change your mind?”

“Dean reminded me that nothing between us can be meaningless.” Floating closer, Castiel watched Sam’s breath catch in his throat. He noted differences between Sam and Dean, wondered if it was merely the power of suggestion or curiosity finally acknowledged that made his fingers itch to explore them. “But I haven’t always been kind to you. I have been a… ‘dick’, as Dean would say. I don’t honestly know why you would want this, Sam.”

Sam smiled almost bashfully. “Because you’re beautiful, and I’m human, and therefore really good at wanting things I can’t have. Because I love Gabriel more than I thought I could love anyone, and he wants a flock again… like what he had with the other archangels before Heylel Fell.” Castiel startled and Sam’s smile widened. “You didn’t realize? He lost so much when Heylel became Lucifer, and things just got worse and worse for him until he couldn’t stay, had to leave because he couldn’t choose… if I can give him back even a little of that…” He shrugged. “It’s nothing compared to what he’s given me, and he wouldn’t ask for this lightly. He’s like Dean that way: all misdirection and flair to keep people from seeing inside. Always afraid to ask for what they want because they figure they won’t get it.”

It was truth; Castiel knew the moment Sam said it that the hunter understood far better than he’d ever let on and meant every word of his own intentions. Against all odds, Sam knew his brother and beloved better than Castiel might’ve guessed, and had enough love… enough humanity… to give what they needed without being asked. Without thought to himself.

Perhaps Sam had more of Heylel in him than Lucifer, when all was said and done. More of the Light-Bringer of God than the Ruler of Hell. “Sam… I-”

“Don’t, Cas.” Sam pushed through the water, into Castiel’s space, close enough to touch but not… not yet…

“I should tell you… you deserve to know: that night in Bobby’s panic room-”

“I don’t care.” Sam’s voice was firm. He and Dean had already guessed ages ago, and hearing the words wouldn’t change anything that had come before or since. “We stopped it. We’re cleaning up the mess it left behind. I don’t care, Cas. We’re okay.”

Castiel stared up into that earnest face… sincere hazel-green eyes… bright-burning soul that offered absolution to an angel…

It was nothing to close the distance now, to lean in and gently press his mouth to Sam’s and lick the saline droplets from his lips before Sam caught him close, deepening the contact, something hungry and excited and feral and _grateful_ rushing from Sam into Castiel wherever they touched…

Somehow, blindly, they stumbled back to the beach, kissing and touching and pulling at each other. Sam’s hands were huge and warm, gliding across Castiel’s skin with a fierce kind of wonder, as if shocked that Castiel would allow it and determined not to lose the chance…

Castiel’s eyes rolled up as Sam’s mouth found sensitive places and suckled hard, dragging red weals across his skin with an insistence Dean rarely displayed… Sam’s hunger kindled his own brighter, sharper, and Castiel nibbled and kissed and dug his fingers into any part of Sam he could reach… pulling little heartfelt whines and groans and punches of breath out of the human until Castiel was dizzy from the sound of sea and man and his own heartbeat roaring as Sam set his body ablaze… arching up into Sam’s grip when one of those blissfully, blessedly warm hands wrapped around the aching length of him and crying out Sam’s name…

Tight, slick heat engulfed him. Startled, Castiel’s eyes flew wide to watch Sam’s face twisted in rapture, the human gliding down until their hips were flush and Castiel was buried to the root with Sam braced above him, trembling, entranced, droplets of seawater and sweat glistening across his sleekly-muscled body.

“Castiel…” It was a sob, choked out in need and want and love… Father help him, Sam loved him… not like he loved Gabriel but it was still there and Castiel had missed it… how could he have missed it?

“Sam…” Castiel reached up, drew Sam down with gentle hands and kissed him. Sam gasped into his mouth, collapsing on his forearms, one hand sliding up to tangle in Castiel’s hair, tugging just a little. Castiel’s hips bucked of their own volition, a short spark of friction that pulled a ragged cry out of Sam and left Castiel gasping… Sam’s hips rolled back, wringing another cry from them both at the slow, deep drag of hottightstrangebeautiful and so good that Castiel was amazed he could feel this with anyone but Dean…

It was astonishingly good, the difference in the way Sam took the angel apart, his muscles clenching and flexing until he found a rhythm and held it, somewhere finding a way to touch and taste and explore until Castiel could do little more than thrust up into Sam’s body and claw at the damp sand beneath them.

“You’re amazing…” Sam’s voice was wrecked, husky, nearly drowned out by the dull roar of the rushing tide. “Feel so good in me… love you, Cas… gotta know I love you…”

All the angel could manage was the hunter’s name, lost in Sam’s voice as Sam murmured at him, nonsense words of praise and lust and love and wonder until Castiel could have climaxed from that voice alone, stroking over him and curling through him as heat coiled at the base of his spine… sending his hips thrusting up against Sam’s in short, shallow shoves that drove little cries out of Sam with every breath… he reached up with one sand-gritted hand, wrapping tight fingers around Sam and stroking fast…

Sam’s back arched, his head thrown back as he keened his release and sank his nails deep enough to slice half-moons into Castiel’s chest. Pain laced through the surge in his blood and Castiel came, sitting bolt upright and locking Sam against him, shivering and kissing Sam’s tattoo as Sam’s arms wrapped solidly around him.

The tide was edging up the beach; Castiel could feel the tease of the water’s edge lapping at his heels, gentle and grounding. Slow, as if emerging from a dream, his head tipped back and he looked up at Sam. The shyness was back, hiding in the corners of Sam’s eyes. Bracing for rejection, afraid of being found wanting… of not being good enough…

Castiel wasn’t always good at human words, and Dean’s almost pathological refusal to talk about relationships or feelings unless absolutely necessary didn’t help that much. The angel had gotten used to simply reading Dean if he was concerned about something, and Dean had accepted the compromise with a gruffle of ill-grace and then hadn’t spoken of it again, privately relieved. But Sam was different than his brother, harder and easier all at once. Sam needed words.

“I’m sorry,” Cas whispered, each hand cradling a side of Sam’s face. “For my part in pushing you both so far… for not fighting back sooner or harder. For words that hurt you, because I couldn’t see past the darkness that bound you. You deserved better from me, Sam, and I’m sorry.”

A tremulous smile, and then Sam bent and kissed him, slow and soft and loving. “It’s okay, Cas. I forgave you a long time ago… Dean, too. I’m just sorry I let you down.”

“You never let me down,” Castiel corrected. “I didn’t expect much from you… not until Gabriel joined us and behaved as though Azazel’s taint and your similarities to Lucifer meant nothing. By then, there was a distance between us… one I put there, but one I didn’t believe you were interested in changing.”

“Nothing between us now.” Sam’s lips twitched into an amused smirk. “Feels nice, too.”

Castiel’s eyes darkened as Sam’s muscles flexed around him, his spent arousal giving an interested stir in response. “We should possibly get off the beach,” he advised, his voice low, roughened velvet. “Gabriel will undoubtedly take it amiss if you have abrasions in… sensitive areas.”

A bark of laughter rang out, and Sam slid effortlessly from his embrace before helping him to his feet. Castiel glanced around for his boxers; finding none, he summoned a manifestation of the tunic beneath his angelic armor: soft silk as inky black as his hair, embroidered in gold and falling just below his knees. Sam’s hazel eyes were bright in the afternoon sun as he watched it materialize. “Nice threads,” he commented, his own voice thick and dark as he bent and retrieved something from the beach.

Castiel blinked to see that it wasn’t an item of clothing, but a piece of curved, polished moonstone that practically radiated angelic grace. It glistened in the sun, though it was now speckled with wet sand. “I don’t recognize the shape of that talisman.”

Sam blinked, glanced at the object in his hand, and then blushed. “It’s um… it’s a plug. For… uh… you know.”

Those deep lapis eyes never faltered, confusion and curiosity reflection back at him. “No, I don’t know, or I would not inquire.”

Visibly startled, Sam’s eyebrows arched as he regarded his brother’s angel. “Dean’s never even talked to you about using toys before?” Castiel’s furrowed expression of consternation was enough to confirm it, and Sam cut him off with a wave of his empty hand before Castiel could respond. “I’m surprised, honestly, but whatever. It’s designed to keep your internal muscles stretched and open while you wear it. Gabriel made this for me himself, and he can use it as a focal stone when he uses his grace on me, but they can be made out of almost anything.”

For a moment, Castiel considered, examining the aide d’amour in Sam’s hand with his eyes. “You spoke in plural,” he said finally. “Are there other things like this that Dean hasn’t told me about?”

The keen edge of interest in Castiel’s eyes had Sam grinning. “What’s say we go back to the house? I’ll catch a shower and clean this, and you can use what I’m sure is Gabriel’s own infallible Internet connection to do some… research.”

Castiel’s answering grin was sharp and conspiratorial, and he whisked them from the beach with a gentle touch to Sam’s temple.

* * *

Quick showers were a Winchester routine; most of the motels they frequented had spottily reliable water heaters and they were usually in a hurry besides. Dean caught a glimpse of his angel down on the beach, watching Sam and Gabriel playing in the surf, and decided to go exploring. He liked to know his surroundings, and Gabriel’s tour had offered glimpses but hadn’t delved too deeply into the green surrounding the house.

There were resemblances to Heaven’s Garden, or what Dean and Sam had perceived of it beyond the illusion of the botanical gardens they’d visited as children, but Gabriel’s personal touch was everywhere. The fruit hanging heavy from trees and vines had a lush, perpetual ripeness to it, the flowers’ scent thick without being cloying. Waterfalls trickled musically over stone formations and the rhythmic rush of the tides echoed soothingly in the background.

It continually surprised Dean to realize how much complexity Gabriel concealed with his brash and often outrageous persona. There was an artistry, a poetry to the lines of everything around him… an attention to detail and carefully-executed precision that was built into all of Gabriel’s creations, illusion or reality, that Dean wouldn’t have guessed the Trickster capable of at first or even second glances.

Gabriel really was a good match for Sam: lightening his brother’s more serious nature and playing to the parts of him that were like their mother… the parts that wanted romance and happy-ever-after. They were things he wanted himself, in his own way, but Dean figured he was too much like his father to ever bring himself to ask for them, and wouldn’t really know what he was asking for anyway. How could he ask Castiel for something if he couldn’t even figure out what he was asking for?

“You changed his mind.”

Dean glanced up from where he’d been sitting by a fragrant cluster of hippeastrum. Gabriel was there, a short silk tunic the color of midnight sapphires falling to his knees, his feet bare and his sunset hair still damp with seawater. “Interesting look.”

“Weather appropriate, easier to ditch than a Speedo and shows off my sexy knees.” Gabriel grinned at the bitchface Dean threw over the image of the golden-eyed Trickster in a Speedo and then stepped closer, sitting beside the hunter on the warm stones of the path. “Castiel… you changed his mind on the whole ‘no couples’ thing.”

“Nah… I just told him to deal with whatever issue was between him and Sam that got him all up in arms about it.” Dean purposely didn’t look at Gabriel, didn’t eye the way his well-muscled legs stretched out or their graceful lines as the archangel pointed and wriggled his toes in a patch of sunlight. Gabriel _looked_ immortal somehow, ageless and perfectly formed, dizzying to mortal senses if they focused on him and inviting said human just a little closer…

It was different than Cas, whose body was sculpted to match his former vessel’s right down to the human imperfections. Dean loved them, loved Cas to complete and utter distraction… but there were times when Gabriel caught his attention, when he looked just a little more than human… and it made Dean’s palms itch with curiosity.

“I wasn’t aware they had an issue.” Gabriel was ignoring Dean ignoring him, knowing it was an act. Knowing this had been hovering on the edges for far too long between them. “Cas is pretty protective of you both, even with me around.”

Dean shrugged. “He’s the one that let Sam loose to ice Lilith. Doesn’t realize we figured it out.”

Gabriel blinked, amber eyes rounding and banishing the unaffected air he’d been wearing. “What? What do you mean: ‘let Sam loose’?”

“Don’t get all smitey about it,” Dean snapped. “The kid was all hopped up on bitch blood and I was tryin’ to keep him from doing something that’d get him killed, so me an’ Bobby locked him in Bobby’s panic room. No way he opened it himself because you can’t open it from the inside, and demons can’t touch it so Ruby couldn’t’ve let him out. Only other anything that woulda cared about Sam killing the bitch were the angels, and they had Cas jumping through every hoop they could think of to put distance between him and us after they yanked him upstairs for ‘re-education’.”

The bitterness in Dean’s voice told Gabriel volumes. “He never mentioned that to me… not that I blame him. Heaven’s version of re-education isn’t hug therapy; I wouldn’t wanna relive it, either.”

Dean was quiet for a long moment, gazing into the distance with unseeing eyes and listening to the sounds of water surrounding them. “He was gonna tell me… ‘bout the whole vessel thing. He found out somehow and was gonna warn me, and they yanked him right outta Jimmy’s body before he could talk.”

Unspoken guilt laced the words and Gabriel shifted closer, sliding a comforting hand over the hunter’s. “He loves you, Dean. Did even then, or they wouldn’t’ve watched him so close. Dad built us out of love, y’know, and made us swear to love humans as we love Him. With one notable exception, we all took that oath, _including_ Castiel. When Dad left…” He shrugged, his own eyes far away and clouded with memories. “I was gone before that, not that Dad acted like He noticed, but I know what must’ve gone down, how it would have affected Michael and the others. Humans are equipped to deal with having deadbeat dads way better than angels are.”

“You dealt with it.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Ignored it. Hid from it. Buried it as long as I could. Not the same as dealing, as you well know.”

Dean turned, gazing down at the archangel. Glints of sunlight reflected from the moisture in that sun-streaked hair, and sherry-gold eyes were lost, unfocused. Adrift in remembrance and emotions that Dean had only the barest frame of reference to even identify.

_Screw this noise. We’re on vacation._

The startled sound Gabriel made when Dean yanked him in was swallowed as their lips met. Dean opened for him, dared him to hold back, to back down, to give just a little more. He wasn’t prepared for what he set loose, for the way Gabriel threw himself into the kiss and shifted to wrap his legs around Dean’s waist, the silk between them as meaningless as the denim cutoffs Dean had found in his size after his shower.

Dean’s hands shoved and tore at the tunic until it was bunched at Gabriel’s neck and he had to shove the archangel back to get it free, and then Gabriel was on him again, a crash of teeth and lips and tongue searing down his jaw and throat as Dean braced him, lurching unsteadily to his feet and blindly reeling them towards the nearby hammock while Gabriel pinched sharp bites along the shell of his ear.

How he spun Gabriel out of his arms and down into the hammock without flipping the angel onto the ground, Dean would never know later and Gabriel would attribute to angelic talent. Dean didn’t care, casting aside his cutoffs and slipping into the hammock across the archangel’s naked hips. Gabriel was on his stomach, fingers laced into the ropes as he pressed up into the hard line of Dean’s erection, a groan of want rolling deep in his throat.

“You this much of a slut for my brother?” Dean murmured, lowering his weight onto Gabriel’s back, pressing the angel further into the hammock. The ropes pressed and chafed across Gabriel’s skin, strafed his erection, dragging a whimper out of the Trickster as Dean’s hands smoothed up the angel’s arms and gripped at his wrists. Tugging back on them until the fingers released their grip, Dean pressed Gabriel’s hands through two holes in the rope weave. “Close them,” he ordered, knowing Gabriel understood him. He heard the hitch of Gabriel’s breath and then the fingers of his right hand snapped, and the ropes shifted and tightened around Gabriel’s wrists, lashing him in place.

Gabriel was at his mercy. Willingly vulnerable to whatever Dean might want to do.

Right now, Dean wanted to know what was underneath him, half-spread between his legs and aching for him.

Every shift set the hammock swinging, creating almost an impression of freefall, their position illusorily precarious. Dean shifted and bent, the heat of his erection just teasing between Gabriel’s cheeks, and he leaned down to sink a long, slow bite of possession into the nape of Gabriel’s neck.

Gabriel arched up into him, a moaning little cry before his breath started panting shallow in his throat.

The absence of touch was almost more effective than a dozen deft caresses. Dean let skin just tease against skin, his lips slowly working their way in petal-soft whispers down Gabriel’s spine, curling paths around his shoulder blades, tongue trailing lightly until Gabriel whined Dean’s name and he was twisting beneath the hunter, the maddening friction of the rope against his arousal inescapable. Dean ignored him, taking his time, finding the juncture of muscle between his shoulder blades and settling in.

“De-an…” Gabriel wasn’t breathing now, was only managing little hitches and punches of air as Dean’s teeth started worrying flesh that wasn’t anywhere near so vulnerable for a normal human. “De-”

“Let ‘em out,” Dean urged, suckling hard on the skin before drifting across the axis of Gabriel’s spine to nip at the opposing musculature. “Let’s see those wings, archangel. You know I won’t stop until you do.”

A long rolling moan as Dean’s teeth sank in. A ripple of power and a rumble like thunder in the distance. Dean pulled back just as the wings unfurled across Gabriel’s back, a mantle of opal feathers gleaming in the sunlight spread wide and trailing along the sides of the hammock.

Dean didn’t hesitate to sink his fingers deep into the plumes, stroking the sensitive underdown and teasing his callused fingertips along the thin web of muscle and skin that anchored those brilliant prismatic pinions.

If Gabriel’s responses had been restrained before, there was nothing reserved about them now. He shrieked and begged and howled in Enochian, in dead languages Dean barely knew from spellwork, his wings shaking and fluttering and every fiber of his body drawn taut as a bowstring. Dean studiously ignored it all; he understood better than anyone how to exercise control when he wanted it, though he hadn’t brought it into sex much since Hell. It was a slippery slope he was terrified to go down… was afraid Castiel would let him tumble down, thinking it was simply what Dean wanted.

Bending to mouth wet kisses up the sensitive arch of the main wing bone, Dean knew Gabriel wouldn’t let him go that far. Would stop him, even if it meant killing and resurrecting him, from going back to that place where domination and consensual sadism were indistinguishable from soul-rending cruelty.

Almost sensing his thoughts, Gabriel mewled and pushed up into Dean, hips questing until the weeping tip of Dean’s erection was pressed against his entrance, the tight ring already flaring as if to beckon Dean in. “Now… now, Dean, please… come on, just do it; just open me up and split me wide and pleasejustgetinme _now…_ ”

“Patience,” Dean admonished. He let his hips rock, teasing just into Gabriel and then retreating as he nipped at the base of the feathers near the bone.

The sound Gabriel made in response wasn’t human. It tore through Dean’s senses before either of them knew it was happening, and when Gabriel arched this time, Dean’s hips pushed back and shoved halfway home in one hard drive.

Rational thought deserted Dean at that point. He caught snatches of images, removed from himself, instinct taking over.

Gabriel, inhumanly tight and hot enough to scorch, shrieking an exultation that could have been heard in Heaven.

Wings flaring and flapping against his hands as he stroked and tugged and explored, gripping them whenever he needed a balance hold and driving the angel mad from the knife-edge of pain, counterpoint to the harsh shove-drag across his prostate that made the angel’s grace throb under his skin.

Rope digging into his knees as the hard rhythm he set had them swinging wildly in the green, his only anchors the archangel’s wings and the deep clutch of his body.

Filthy words tumbling from his lips, whispered in the ArchHerald’s ear: how he didn’t even have to touch Gabriel’s cock, how he’d make the angel come just from this, how he’d wanted to get the Trickster under him for as long as he could remember. Did the angel love being fucked like a slut? Did Sam fuck him this way?

Keening, wordless responses ripping out of Gabriel’s throat, his spine arching as Dean bent and bit nearly hard enough to draw blood from the nape of Gabriel’s neck, shoving hard and deep and sawing across Gabriel’s prostate.

The angel coming with a scream and a rip of thunderous grace, wet splatters on the ground beneath them as Gabriel jerked against the ropes while Dean hammered into him, furiously chasing relief.

“Come in me, Dean… need to feel it…”

White. Whiter than the clouds in the sky or the sand on the beach. Whiter even than Gabriel’s feathers. Dean was lost in it, coming with a shout inside his brother’s mate as the world slid away.

When Dean finally felt reality settle back over his senses, it was quiet around them. The soft sound of water’s movement filled the air, as Dean registered that he was now on his side in the hammock, Gabriel spooned back against his chest, his arms wrapped around the angel’s torso. The wings were put away; would have been awkward in this position. But the smaller frame against his was warm and smelled wonderful, and Dean let himself burrow his nose into the angel’s hair.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Gabriel just stroked gentle, reassuring fingers over Dean’s hands. Hands that had just imprisoned him. Hands that had drawn blood in Hell and broken the First Seal. Hands that had tried to kill the Trickster more than once.

“It’s all right,” Gabriel said softly after a long time.

“Don’t know as it should be,” Dean replied quietly.

Gabriel nestled further back into him, lacing his fingers into Dean’s and holding tight. “Should or shouldn’t don’t matter here. Just what is… and it _is_ all right.”

Closing his eyes, Dean absorbed the scent of ozone and lilies in Gabriel’s hair, the warmth of sun and angel. He was safe, and loved. Castiel and Sam were nearby but couldn’t possibly be in any danger, and the Fate of the world wasn’t on his shoulders. Tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying fled from his frame, and Dean sighed almost contentedly before drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep.


	3. Paradise – Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see Part One for warnings, disclaimers and notes.

~ooooOOOoooo~

The Winchesters were in the kitchen, attending to that pesky human need to hydrate and ingest nutrients after strenuous activity. Lingering in the doorway, Gabriel watched with molten eyes as the brothers skirted each other, Dean’s eyebrows doing their best to mimic Gabriel’s suggestive quirks and Sam blushing charmingly while smirking at his brother… a tantalizing twitch at the corners of his lips that Gabriel had come to privately call his ‘I’ve just gotten really well fucked’ smirk.

It was similar to his ‘I just fucked an archangel speechless’ smirk, except there was a smugness to the latter, while the former was just a touch beatific, as if being topped by an angel was enough to put him halfway to subspace all by itself.

That thought did all sorts of things to Gabriel’s composure, and he made a mental note to experiment with the concept in the _very_ near future. Possibly on both Winchesters. Just for the sake of comparative inquiry.

For now, though, it was enough to watch the humans interacting. Sam was bringing some kind of broth to a boil on the stove and had tortellini at the ready; Dean was eating a banana, totally unconscious innuendo infusing every bite he took. The brothers were bantering softly, teasing each other. Playing. They were being brothers again.

It was working.

The thought made Gabriel happy enough to soar.

He wasn’t naïve enough to think the whole ‘no exclusivity’ thing would spill out into their lives away from this island. They might vacation here again, or at other little nooks Gabriel had designed for himself over the years, and suspend the boundaries for the duration, but nothing so perfect as having this all the time ever happened for any of them. But the effects would linger, because they would all remember how this felt and hold tight, and it would help keep the walls between them from being rebuilt. Walls that isolated. Walls that shouldn’t be between brothers.

At least, Gabriel knew it would work that way for the humans. He still wasn’t sure about Castiel.

Gabriel hadn’t really anticipated that his baby brother might raise objections to this. If Sam had been the core of Castiel’s opposition, then the problem was likely solved, considering the look on Sam’s face. But was if it wasn’t? What if Castiel’s real opposition was to him, and he let Dean think it was only Sam because he didn’t want to bring the Byzantine complexity of angelic fraternal disputes out in the open?

In the end, Gabriel wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the answer, and if they’d been in Heaven, he could have ignored it. Probably would have, once upon a time. But he’d changed. Time on Earth, away from the Host had changed him.

Rebelling against the Apocalypse by doing more than just absenting himself from the proceedings. Living with the Winchesters and Castiel. Loving Sam… and even Dean, after a fashion. It had all changed him. And he couldn’t just ignore this.

Sam finally got sick of Dean’s teasing, dumped the pasta in the broth, turned and flung a dishrag at his brother in one fluid motion. Dean dodged and lunged, Sam meeting him head on, the two brothers wrestling like boys and grinning all the while.

Drinking in the sight, Gabriel sighed in contentment and then went to find his brother.

* * *

As it turned out, Castiel was still researching whatever Sam had turned him onto when they’d come back. Gabriel smiled fondly at the sight of his serious little brother scanning computer articles at superhuman speed, devouring information as fast as he could. Castiel was an angel of solitude, or had been until Dean Winchester had exploded into the seraph’s existence; it wasn’t surprising to Gabriel in the least that his little brother excelled at solitary tasks.

“Hey, bro,” Gabriel finally greeted, opting for an oblique approach. “Better not be working while we’re on vacation. Kinda defeats the purpose.”

“I am researching the various forms of human sexual behavior that Dean has yet to discuss with me.” Castiel looked up from the computer, lapis eyes vivid against the paleness of his face. “Some seem to closely mirror techniques Dean learned under Alastair’s tutelage.”

A tightness immediately contracted in Gabriel’s chest. That was something he might’ve prevented, once upon a time. “Yeah… they do.”

Castiel studied his brother… a brother he’d barely known, had respected once. Even feared a little. Loved… he wasn’t sure. Everything he knew of love had changed since then… and Gabriel had left Heaven. Had left the Host and hidden from them. Was still hiding, even now, beneath merry laughter and golden eyes.

“Dean is afraid to explore his own needs,” Castiel observed softly, gazing steadily at his elder brother. “Afraid that I will allow him to descend into the kind of depravity that he indulged in Hell as Alastair’s pupil… that my devotion to him renders me too weak to prevent him from losing himself in the crueler games of the flesh and returning to what he was.”

“He did see you in the pit of despair once, bro.” Gabriel’s smile was brittle. “I taught Zachariel a little too well, back in the day.”

Castiel stepped closer. He felt the shifting whorls in Gabriel’s grace, saw the hesitancy to approach as a brother, the belief in the cowardice Dean had once accused him of. The inability to believe that compassion and redemption from any of his angelic brethren was even possible anymore. “I will not allow Dean to deny himself what he needs because he is afraid… both of being told that he does not deserve it and of getting it and somehow losing all that he has in the process.”

Gabriel didn’t move. Couldn’t move. He saw the angel beneath Cas’ skin, felt Cas’ eternity reaching for his own but never quite touching. “Why do I think you ain’t just talking about Dean?”

Another step. They were of a height, blue eyes boring into gold. “You hurt me once,” Cas reminded his brother, voice quiet as wind in meadow grass. “Chained me and set guards to keep me bound, and all to prevent me from revealing your identity to the Winchesters.”

“I did.” Gabriel’s entire body thrummed, grace rioting, desperate… Castiel was close… so close and radiant and so much like _home_ …

“Your disappearance wounded us all.” Castiel had stopped moving, grace a brilliant blaze beneath his flesh, behind his eyes. “We had no idea you were even still alive.”

“I had to survive.” The words forced out, his vessel’s throat closing. “I couldn’t stay, Castiel… and I couldn’t take any of you with me.”

The inch between them closed. Castiel’s heat seared against Gabriel, silk rustling against silk. “I will not allow you to hurt me, or the Winchesters. Not again.”

“Cas…”

Anything else Gabriel might have said was lost as Castiel’s long fingers fisted into Gabriel’s tunic, and the seraph dragged the ArchHerald’s mouth into his own.

Grace ignited at the contact, Castiel twining around and through Gabriel until their vessels were meaningless, pale afterimages of their true forms, shades diminished by sunlight. Gabriel had only the faintest impression of clinging to Castiel’s shoulders, of matching the ruthless absolution of Castiel’s lips with fathomless gratitude. Wings of lightening and folded time flung free, entwining, inseparable…

Gabriel’s grace wept, and Castiel’s instantly comforted it, crooning low and loving, banishing shadows that had crept into the edges, tending the wounds of more than a dozen mortal lifetimes cut off from the Host. In turn Gabriel soothed anger, doubt, the fear that grace was forever lost to the little Power that had defied the First of them All, reminding him that true Grace had never been Michael’s to bestow or revoke. Only His… always His…

And the root of His Name is a single, undeniable truth.

Their vessels tumbled to the floor, graces merging, singing, joyous. Formless and jubilant, the Love they were built from learned the other’s every note and nuance, rose and fell, melted into harmony meant to ring across the Spheres in exaltation of Him, braiding into one another and building together higher and higher, blooming outward until there was nothing to constrain them. Somewhere below there was a sense of tangible touch, of flesh on flesh… of Gabriel leaving bright love-bites down the centerline of Castiel’s stomach… of Castiel raising vivid suck marks on Gabriel’s pubic bones…

Over and over they tumbled, until sweat-slick bodies were tangled together and their grace-blaze could have blotted out the sun… fingers gripping bruises across solid muscle that faded an instant later while tumescent flesh rode the searing cradle of the other’s hips, need feeding and relieving need all at once… tendrils of grace curling over skin… a thousand tiny feathers caressing… coiling where their bodies rocked into each other… tighter and tighter… mouths crushing together to muffle a sound that couldn’t be contained…

Melding. A clarion chord of union and reunion. Of love and acceptance and absolution. Of forgiveness. Of joy.

It was Castiel who ended it, who eased them both through the almost painful separation and back into themselves, their physical bodies sated, still dotted here and there with drops of saline in various forms. Gabriel all but whined wordlessly at the loss, unwilling to relinquish belonging now that he’d finally accepted it again, and Castiel lulled him with soft kisses, gentled his distress.

Gabriel hadn’t anticipated the strength of his need for intimacy with another angel. After so long without, he hadn’t really been sure his grace would be receptive to another’s that way, like a hunter isolated from other humans for too long, and therefore losing his facility for easy interaction with his fellow men. This had been somewhat else. Like a man forced to live on only a few droplets of water at a time, suddenly allowed to drink his fill.

It was enough to leave the archangel a trembling wreck in his brother’s arms, shaking from the force of his own responses. He nuzzled reflexively at Castiel’s jaw, soaking up the feel of his brother’s warm, well-molded flesh naked against his own, grace once again contained but pulsing alongside his own more surely than the steadiest heartbeat.

Castiel, for his part, seemed incapable of relinquishing his hold on Gabriel, long fingers toying with the hair at Gabriel’s nape and stroking soothingly at the dip near the base of Gabriel’s spine. “Brother…”

“Brother.” Gabriel couldn’t help grinning, nestling closer, eyes closed as he absorbed physical and spiritual comfort in equal measures. “Our intrepid hunters wouldn’t understand, you know. How we can do this and still think of each other as brothers and have that be okay.”

“I’ve found that many humans fail to understand that there is no abomination in truly consensual congress,” Castiel replied, shifting a leg between Gabriel’s and deciding to do some nuzzling of his own against Gabriel’s throat. “Even between human kin, true consent cannot be impugned. It is when that consent is obtained through duress or coercion, no matter how innocuously worded, that the taboo exists.”

“You will never get them to understand that, Cas,” Gabriel murmured gently. “Humans don’t think of their family relations the same way we do, so they get all knotted up about this kind of thing. Even Sam and Dean, who Zach so aptly described as ‘erotically codependant’, aren’t likely to accept ‘brother’ as a sexual endearment. It is what it is, and there’s nothing we can do to really change that.”

The wistful undertone in Gabriel’s voice set Castiel’s mind to work, mulling silently as he mouthed musingly along the underside of Gabriel’s jaw. “What if we could?”

“What?” Gabriel rocked back and propped himself up on his elbows, trying to break the spell Castiel was re-weaving over his senses. “Cas, it’s not important…”

“You want a flock.” Castiel gazed up at his brother, luminous eyes with pupils still wide-blown and ringed with grace-fire. “Human curiosity is more insidious than any demon’s blandishment, as you well know, and the brothers know about the apocryphal stories being written by some of those that have read the Winchester gospels. If we push their boundaries just a little… carefully, not quickly… but just giving them enough to spark a bit of wonder…”

“ _They_ might not cross the line, but it might just keep my calling you ‘brother’ in bed from being a complete turn-off.” Gabriel trailed light fingers down Castiel’s thigh, golden eyes pensive and amused. “I like this devious streak of yours, Castiel. Wherever did you pick it up?”

“Around the garrison,” Cas replied blandly. “But I did learn from the best.”

“Feh,” Gabriel huffed in annoyance. “Balthazar’s been copping my moves since his wings sprouted.”

Castiel’s expression shifted, becoming almost coy as he curled towards Gabriel. “I know,” was all he said, and then his tongue snaked out to run the full length of Gabriel’s half-renewed arousal, heat and grace blooming in its wake. Gabriel dropped back with a low keen and sank his fingers into Castiel’s inky black hair, eyes closing against the tears that burned in the corners.

It might actually be possible to have a flock again.

* * *

Very few movies appealed to both brothers. Dean was almost hypercritical of action flicks, picking apart the accuracy of fight scenes like he was auditioning for _**MythBusters**_ ; and Sam had a weakness for literature-based epics that he rarely had the time to indulge. Usually, Dean watched whatever didn’t irritate him too much, or porn, and Sam retreated into movie downloads or DVD rips on his laptop.

But they never got tired of _**Boondock Saints**_.

It was engrossed in that same movie on a wall-sized plasma that the angels found their hunters, laughing uproariously and splayed out in comfort. Dean was once again wearing the cutoffs, with a sleeveless black shirt covering his torso but leaving Castiel’s handprint in full view. Sam was wearing full-legged, low-slung jeans and no shirt, displaying every mark Gabriel had ever left him with and yards of sleek tan muscle that practically begged to be touched.

Dean caught sight of the angels first and paused the movie. “Tell me you two’ve seen _**Boondock Saints**_.”

“Not yet,” Gabriel replied in an almost-teasing tone. Sam gestured eagerly, a boyish smile lighting his features, and Gabriel pulled Castiel to the rug where their lovers lounged.

After the _**Saints**_ came _**The Replacements**_ , and then _**Nightmare Before Christmas**_ , which Castiel had caught part of in passing during his search for God and been totally confused by. The explanations of popular culture behind the symbolism were almost more fun for the Winchesters than the movie itself. Sam tousled Castiel’s hair fondly when the angel questioned why the brothers appeared perfectly at ease with this movie when he knew they didn’t watch other monster films due to their profession. “ ‘Cause this isn’t meant to be scary, Cas. It’s meant to be a little absurd and a lot of fun, so it’s easier not to take the discrepancies seriously.”

Castiel considered that for a moment, and then shrugged and leaned in to gently kiss Sam’s bemused smile.

Dean’s breath gave an odd little hitch. Sam’s eyes widened as Cas drew back, an almost sweet smile playing at the angel’s lips. Gabriel scrambled from where he’d been sprawling between Sam’s legs and grabbed the remote. “Distract him too much, Cas, and we’re watching _**Sleepless In Seattle**_.”

“The Hell we are,” Dean rumbled playfully.

“Who’s gonna stop me, big boy?” Gabriel taunted, eyes flashing amber glee.

Dean lunged.

Gabriel dodged.

Sam caught one of the archangel’s ankles as he shot past; Gabriel came down across the carpet like a felled tree and then Dean was on him and both brothers were grinning as Gabriel was suddenly trapped beneath their weight and being tickled within an inch of his immortal life.

“Cas?!” he gasped out. “Little help here… bro?”

Blue eyes danced, and then Castiel slid in and wedged between Gabriel and Dean, running grace-charged fingers over his brand on Dean’s arm.

With a long moan, Dean fell away, leaving Gabriel an opening to scramble up onto the couch, perching almost like a cat that had narrowly escaped a Doberman. Sam was still laughing as he stole the remote back and headed for the ice cream bar Gabriel had snapped into existence between movies. “We’re watching _**Die Hard**_ ,” he tossed over his shoulder, ignoring the twitch of interest at the peripheral sight of Dean kissing Castiel breathless. “And then _**Die Hard Three**_ if we’re still up. _**Two**_ sucked hard.”

“Anything you say, Sammy,” Gabriel conceded, fairly glowing.

Sam gave him a speculative glance, loaded up a sundae and then proceeded to tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue as he came back.

Dean glanced up from Castiel’s lips as his little brother displayed his handiwork to the archangel between sharp white teeth. “Show off.”

* * *

Piled together like puppies in a basket, Gabriel’s plasma television flickering in the darkness, the humans slowly drifted into blissful, untroubled sleep. The Winchester brothers slept back to back, their angels nestled close and just resting in their arms, unburdened by nightmares or responsibilities for, possibly, the first time in their young lives.

Not wanting to wake them, Gabriel gestured the television off rather than snapping. The artificial light died away, and the room was filled only with the luminous glow of the moon, full and pale white as she traveled across the star-dappled sky.

Over the long years since he’d left Heaven, the moon had been the only true constant in his life. His connection to her was written into his deepest nature, his mercurial moods tempered by her steady presence. Until he’d finally taken a chance on love, she had been his only solace in the quiet deep of countless nights when the world was still and despair left him jaded to all distraction.

Feeling happy and at peace for the first time in ages, Gabriel cuddled closer into his human and let the moon bathe them in her own silent benediction.

* * *

The ice cream was replaced by Belgian waffles by the time the humans woke sometime around mid-morning. Sam lurched blearily to his feet, glancing at Dean as his brother loaded a plate with more toppings than waffle. “Where are they?”

“Cas decided he wanted to see how close Gabriel copied Eden,” Dean replied. “Gabe went along to play tour guide.”

Sam grinned. “So they’re bonding, huh?”

“Looks like it.” Dean settled in on a huge chair, putting his feet up and diving into breakfast. “Man, I could get used to this. We should do this every year, like normal people.”

“And suspend sex boundaries once a year?” Dean shoved a forkful of waffle into his mouth, avoiding Sam’s eyes. Sam knew it was pushing, but this was Dean. If he didn’t push, he’d never know anything about what was going through his brother’s mind. “Dean, we should probably talk about this at some point…”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Dean replied quickly. “Sex is something you do, Sam. Talking about it’s for chicks.”

Sam’s fork hit his plate and he glared at his brother, a wholly new bitchface coalescing as Dean watched. “Fuck you, Dean; you’re such a fucking jackass sometimes.”

“Sammy-”

“Shut up; I’m talking now.” Sam looked angry. Furious. “If I hear you say that one more time, I’m gonna get Gabriel to hex you into saying every thought that ever goes through your head. Are you really comfortable deflecting by saying that actually having a serious conversation about a relationship… _any_ relationship… is a character defect brought on by having two X chromosomes? That when Mom said she loved you or talked things through with Dad, it was a flaw?”

Dean visibly flinched. “Leave Mom outta this,” he snarled, cold and quiet.

“No. I won’t.” Sam’s voice was equally chilled. “You’re insulting her memory every time you put women down, Dean. And you do that every time you call an actual discussion ‘chick moments’ or ‘girly talks’. You don’t wanna talk? Think it makes you too exposed or less than what you are? Fine. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. But you’re putting down Mom and Jess and Lisa and Cassie and Ellen and Jo every time you call a meaningful talk a ‘chick moment’, and I’m sick of it.”

Quiet settled over the room; only the soft sounds of breakfast being eaten interrupted the silence. Sam had finished his and was sipping a pungent cup of coffee when Dean spoke again. “Why’d he think this up in the first place?”

Sam didn’t need to ask who and what Dean meant. “It’s the closest he figures he’ll get to what he really wants.”

“Which is?”

“There’s no human concept that really parallels it,” Sam continued carefully. He didn’t like the tone in Dean’s voice: neutral and unpredictable. “It’s an angel thing, really… but even getting us to agree to this, I don’t think he’d push for more. He’ll figure this is good enough… that he doesn’t deserve more after everything that’s happened.”

Dean understood the sentiment. A part of him wanted to just let things be, to agree with Gabriel’s assessment because none of them really deserved what they had together as it was, and pushing for more was just inviting all kinds of bad karma. Better to let it be and keep what they had as long as they could.

But the rebellion in his soul, the part of Dean that refused to accept any fate but what they made together, kicked open a Pandora’s Box of curiosity. “Tell me.”

Surprised, Sam did.


	4. Paradise – Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see Part One for warnings, disclaimers and notes.

~ooooOOOoooo~

Nothing in Gabriel’s long existence could have compared to this day. He and Castiel had been joined by the brothers around mid-morning, and something in their bearing had been… relaxed. Open. Sam’s giant hand had slid around his own, a warm and loving embrace all in one gesture, and Dean had wrapped Castiel under one arm with a soft kiss to the temple.

For half the day, they explored the island together, footsteps never far from each other. Hands reached out and found familiar flesh, skin seeking the swift kiss of skin before separating again.

Sam’s stomach gave a half-hearted rumble, and Dean decided to show off. Climbing the nearest fruit tree with the nimble grace of a marmoset, he grinned cunningly down at Castiel before tossing down one ripe mango after another. Castiel caught each one easily, tossing them to Gabriel or Sam in the same motion, his answering smile just as playful.

Smooth limestone blocks paved the walkways, dotted here and there with large geodes of semiprecious stone, polished to high gleam. A casual comment on it from Sam sparked a long discussion of the correspondences between every angel and various elements of the natural world, the ties to those same elements that humans still had, could still manipulate if they let their barriers against it down.

Dean, ever the tactician, asked incisive questions about the efficacy of crystal work in traps, especially for demons and spirits, which Gabriel was more than happy to answer. Sam half-listened to them while discussing more basic and broad-reaching aspects of deep magick with Castiel, reaching for the fundamentals. Wanting to understand the laws that governed the mayhem of their lives outside this island.

A search for Dean’s ring when he accidentally twisted it from his finger led to a teasing wrestle in the verdant brush between Sam and Gabriel, which ended in several deep kisses that Dean pointedly ignored while Castiel retrieved the silver band from the bottom of a crystal clear pond nearby.

At the heart of the island was a massive labyrinth, with the center a mosaic of glittering crystals that flung chaotic rainbows across anything the light touched. Sam and Dean, not really understanding the meditative mystery such mazes represented, sat in silence while their angels walked the stone paths, steps carelessly measured and eyes far away as the ritual path let them commune with currents of the infinite that escaped mortal ken.

When the angels emerged, there was a luminous cast to their human features, a lightness of being that caught their lovers’ breath, stilling thought beyond rapture.

Gabriel then promptly suggested volleyball on the beach and snapped them there.

Three games later, during which Gabriel cheated outrageously, Dean made pointedly snarky comments about Sam’s height until Sam spiked the ball directly into Dean’s sternum and Castiel failed entirely to understand the point of the game until Gabriel pointed out the highly attractive appearance of their well-exerted humans, all them dove into the ocean to cool off. Gabriel talked Castiel into demonstrating the whole walking-on-water trick, which Dean immediately declared a much holier sight than it must’ve been when Jesus did it. Castiel gave him a thoroughly confused look until Sam laughingly reminded Cas that he was stark naked.

The resultant splash as Castiel’s body weight dropped through the water’s surface tension ended Sam’s laughter with a choking splutter. Dean grinned, swam closer, and kissed his angel.

When they were finally exhausted, Gabriel snapped them back to a paved courtyard at the house, where they sprawled like contented cats in the late afternoon sun, half-dozing where they lay stretched across the stones.

By the time they roused, the sky was painted in broad whorls of crimson and lavender and orange, with the faintest edge of twilight gray that seemed to shimmer with the promise of stars. Dean sat up and rubbed his eyes, noticing almost absently the way his knee brushed Sam’s thigh. “Wow… it’s late.”

Gabriel smiled at him from where he was piling wood into a fire pit. “Thinking about heading to bed early, Deano?”

“You’ll have to work a lot harder’n you have been to wear me out,” Dean countered archly.

One tawny eyebrow lifted, as if daring Dean to make it a formal challenge, and the archangel ignited the bonfire with a snap of his fingers. “Better eat first then,” he commented. “Wouldn’t want you crying foul and citing weakness from hunger when you wake up.”

Sam gave Gabriel a half-pout. “Oh, fine… just forget all about me now that you’ve had a chance to bag my brother. It’s not like I wouldn’t like wearing out or anything.”

“I can assure you, Sam,” Castiel replied quietly, “that I am fully capable of depleting your energies just as expediently as Gabriel.”

Dean groaned as Gabriel snapped long trays of various kebobed foods into easy reach. “It is _not_ supposed to sound hot when he talks like an English teacher.”

“What bothers you more?” Sam asked mildly. “The fact that with that voice, you could find him reading the dictionary hot? Or the fact that you understand anything above a fifty-cent word and totally blow your dumb jock image when you admit it?”

“I’ve got a few dollar words for you, bitch,” Dean retorted, pointedly refusing to label either statement as more true than the other.

“Play nice, children.” Gabriel ignored the savories and toasted a marshmallow-laden skewer until the sugar puffs were golden brown.

They ate until they were stuffed. Warm and comfortable and well-fed, a low buzz stole over their senses. Sam lay in a hammock, his long limbs tucked into the rope cradle as comfortably as on a feather bed. Dean was lounged on his side on a stone bench, watching the play of the bonfire against the darkened landscape. Castiel was still as a statue, apparently lost in the stars as they began to dot the black velvet of the sky, and Gabriel was waving their empty cocktail glasses out of existence.

“So, Dean…” Sam called from the hammock. “Today’s adventures aside, I’m amazed you’re not ready to climb the walls around here. I’d’ve figured you’d be bored by now, man.”

“Nah.” Dean grinned, turning his head and glancing at his brother. “There’s plenty to do around here.” He cast an almost-leer at Castiel, who blinked owlishly when he realized Dean’s meaning.

Sam laughed. “Yeah… that’s true.”

“What about you, Sammy?” Dean returned the playful tone. “Anything you’re looking to do since research is out?”

There was a low considering sound from Sam. “Yeah… actually, there is.” His gaze was nearly as golden as Gabriel’s in the firelight. “Since you hate to talk so much, I wanna see you put that tongue to some kind of good use.”

“Meaning?”

A long, slow curl of a smile. “I wanna watch you blow Gabriel.”

Dean suppressed the urge to snicker at the open shock on Gabriel’s face, or Castiel’s. He and Sam had planned this too carefully to give the game away. “Looking for pointers, huh?”

“Just need to know how much of my A game I can use on Cas.” Sam’s grin was almost vicious. “Wouldn’t want to set the bar too high for you.”

“You’d have to spend a year on your knees practicing to bring _my_ skills, bitch.” Dean sat, challenging Sam right back. Even knowing this was a set up, a little play for their angels’ benefit, his pride was still pricking at the half-insults.

“Then prove it, jerk.” Sam swung out of the hammock, settling onto the stones for a better view. “Let’s see what you’ve been bragging about all these years.”

Shrugging, Dean pushed himself up, letting the motion roll, slow and sinuous. Orange-gold firelight danced across his ropey muscles, casting shadows that sculpted hollows at the edges. His eyes were dark, almost black between lust and starlight, his expression a mask of predatory beauty.

Castiel shivered, reminded unwontedly of the elegant cruelty Dean’s hands could wield… even when he teetered on the precipice of transformation from soul to demon, the Dark had never truly erased Dean’s humanity. He had retained enough to make his viciousness a thing of glory, his menace exquisite. His kindness sharper than any blade.

His right hand stretched out as Dean reached Gabriel, fingers splaying to cup the archangel’s cheek. Gabriel was staring, blind uncertainty in the butterscotch whorls of his eyes. Dean saw, unwilling, the fault lines crisscrossing the angel’s grace. The nexi where just the right pressure could shatter the angel in his arms, break him so completely that God could never reach him again… he could do it, if he wanted; could scatter the ArchHerald to pieces and rebuild him to serve only them… only his pleasure, and his Boy King’s… if Sammy wanted it, Dean would make it so…

“Dean.”

His name. His human name. Who spoke it, he wasn’t sure. But it pulled him back, anchored him to himself, refused to let him fall.

Gabriel was still gazing at him, now merely confused, gilded compassion flickering in his gentle eyes. “ ‘S okay, archangel,” Dean soothed, his eyes returning to vibrant blue-green as he knelt. Knees spread, feet together beneath his hips, weight resting on his heels: a submissive posture that went straight to Castiel’s groin. His left hand lifted to cradle Gabriel’s face. “We want this, too.”

Before Gabriel could make a sound, Dean’s lips sealed across his own.

Sam watched, serene and triumphant, as his archangel’s hands slid up to clutch at Dean’s shoulders, a whimper passing between their mouths. Never taking his eyes from them, he glided to Castiel and wrapped around the Power from behind, settling Castiel between his legs and running gentle hands over the seraph’s chest and arms.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Sam murmured, voice purposely pitched to a low vibrato in Castiel’s ear. Castiel moaned, pressing back into Sam’s longer, solid frame, gaze fixed on his beloved and his brother…

Gabriel had willed anything resembling clothing far away. Dean’s tongue was tracing lazy patterns across Gabriel’s skin, callused fingertips just skimming the lines of his arms; Gabriel shivered, tiny whines punctuating every breath, his hands stroking the slope of Dean’s shoulders and the broad expanse of his back as Dean worked his way down. Sam watched, harder than he’d ever been in his life, able to see Gabriel’s uninhibited responses without the angel’s pheromones drugging his own senses. Able to watch his brother…

His beautiful, irresistible, passionate brother…

There was no denying that sensuality was instinctive to Dean, written into every line of his body. If Sam had the Morning Star’s personality, then surely Dean had his uncompromising beauty, elegant proportions, vibrancy… like living flame…

Castiel pressed back further into Sam, the angel’s breath shallow and almost rasping as he watched Dean nuzzle Gabriel’s thigh… hands at ease in lovemaking and battle alike cupping Gabriel’s backside, holding him up on his knees. Dean was bent at the waist, the dip and sway of his back glowing bronze in the firelight, tapering down to two globes of man flesh so firm and inviting that Sam suddenly wanted to lean down and sink his teeth in… to leave a mark of his own…

But he and Dean had agreed: they would do what was needful to make Gabriel happy, but nothing unnatural. Nothing that shouldn’t ordinarily happen between brothers.

The urges were the work of Castiel’s pheromones, Sam decided, ignoring several logical reasons his libido tried to provide in favor of ignoring that line deeply drawn in the sand. Leaning closer, brushing the heel of his palm up Castiel’s erection, Sam watched Dean’s tongue tease the cut V of Gabriel’s hips, flicker at the sensitive juncture between the base of Gabriel’s throbbing arousal and the tender, heavy flesh just beyond…

Listened to Gabriel make a tortured sound of need that might have been a word when the synapse fired but never made it that far…

Saw Dean’s fingers tighten just a little on Gabriel’s flanks as he mouthed the thick vein, setting Gabriel thrashing in his arms…

Watched the bead of blood appear on Gabriel’s lip where one sharp tooth bit through when Dean’s lips finally wrapped around the saline-drenched tip and he gave a short little suckle, almost a tease. A broken sound dragged up out of the archangel, and Dean drew him deeper, taking everything he could.

Moments passed. Hours or seconds; it didn’t matter here. All that mattered were the half-despairing echoes of Gabriel’s high, wanton keens that came from Castiel as he watched from Sam’s arms while Dean explored Gabriel’s erection with his tongue, learning where it differed from his angel’s… offering without words to give Gabriel as much as they could of what he truly wanted…

When Gabriel’s fingers wove into Dean’s short hair, providing just the gentlest direction of pressure, Castiel nearly growled. Sam smiled, having gauged the moment correctly. “Go join them,” he urged, his tone nearly undetectable even to angelic ears. “We should both join them.”

Without needing further encouragement, Castiel flickered into the space directly behind Dean.

There was no need to immediately move in himself; Sam settled in to enjoy the view for a moment. The startled sound that Dean made around Gabriel as Castiel began prepping him shot up Gabriel’s spine like an electrical jolt, and Dean was clutching Gabriel’s legs almost tightly enough to cut off circulation in an effort to remain in control of his own responses. Castiel’s long, elegant fingers were deft and expert, working to stretch Dean’s already-eager muscles with a precision born of familiarity and love while Castiel nipped dozens of tiny bites across the dip in Dean’s spine, the gentle taper of his hip…

Almost appearing to gather his wits, which was nearly impossible with Dean’s tongue still working within the heated suction of his mouth to explore every nuance of hard flesh, Gabriel let his weight relax back when Castiel’s fingers brushed the nerve-bundle they sought and Dean jerked forward on instinct. The fingers Gabriel ran through Dean’s hair turned soothing, reassuring, as Castiel stroked it again and lingered, applying just the most miniscule amount of pressure…

Sam could see Dean’s posture change, his throat opening and relaxing as Castiel’s own demanding need replaced those expert fingers. Watched his brother just let Castiel’s hips press him forward along Gabriel’s erection, his tongue still obviously at work but letting Castiel set the pace.

He saw Castiel’s eyes riveted on Dean, dark blue and almost dangerous, were it not for the love he felt for this Righteous Man on his knees between the two angels.

He saw Gabriel let go, give himself over to the moment, molten eyes fluttering as if he couldn’t decide whether to close them and drown in sensation or keep them open and burn the sight into his memory.

He saw Dean giving himself over to the pleasure of two immortals, not just because he cared for them. Because Sam had asked it of him.

In a heartbeat, Sam was behind Gabriel, unable to watch passively any longer. He’d retrieved a small vial of lube from the house during dinner, which he now withdrew from his jeans as he cast them aside. Unlike Castiel, he couldn’t summon it at will. He could, however, pry Dean’s right hand away from Gabriel’s thigh and liberally coat the fingers with it.

“Get him ready for me, Dean,” Sam asked quietly. “Open him up for me.”

A shudder went through Dean, racing like wildfire through both angels, and Sam moved behind Gabriel to watch while Dean obeyed. Broad hands braced across Gabriel’s back, thumbs brushing the dip where the wing joints manifested, as Dean’s fingers found their way by touch alone, Sam’s pulse throbbing thick in his veins as he watched them tease their way inside. Gabriel’s spine arched, his head falling into the curve of Sam’s shoulder, lips parted and tiny cries falling like stars…

Castiel’s hips jerked, thrusting deep, his full weight and a trickle of grace angling into Dean’s prostate. Dean jerked and moaned, fingers digging sharply into Gabriel’s muscles as Gabriel canted his hips back. Heat brushed heat; Sam couldn’t wait any longer, pheromones heady in the air as he pushed in right alongside Dean’s fingers, his left hand gripping Dean’s right wrist and the right tangling with Gabriel’s in the silk of Dean’s hair.

Only the fire beside them seemed to move, crackling beneath the pant of breath and the thunder of pulse beats.

Castiel slid a gentling hand up Dean’s spine, dispelling panic before it might set in. Gabriel and Sam’s fingers rubbed soothing circles in his scalp, and Sam’s left fingers stroked feathery soft against Dean’s right wrist. Every muscle in Dean’s body seemed taut, quivering, waiting for something…

Gabriel whimpered something in Enochian, his left hand stretching up to thread into Sam’s walnut hair. Sam only barely understood it; something about all being made one…

The tension in Dean’s body uncoiled, unlocked. He drew a long swipe of his tongue up Gabriel’s erection as he shifted back, his body pulling Castiel in almost greedily. Sam took the moment and pressed forward, riding Gabriel deeper and pressing him further into Dean’s mouth. When he eased back, Dean followed the motion, drawing away from Castiel.

A groan seemed to reverberate through all of them, carried one to another. None of them were quite sure anymore where one ended and the others began.

Slow and steady, they found a rhythm, waxing and waning against one another, learning how they fit as one unit, one whole. Sam found himself watching with greedy eyes as Gabriel lost himself, shivering and keening as Dean milked him and Sam filled him, muttering in Enochian when he could string together half a thought, and then Sam would angle just a little harder or Dean would flick his tongue just so against the deep pressure in his throat, and coherence was lost again, sacrificed to the storm. Through it all, Castiel matched Sam’s cadence with his own, eyes hot as he met Sam’s gaze, drank in the sight of Gabriel’s wanton abandon, bent to nibble at Dean’s spine as he rolled his hips into his hunter’s to reach just that fraction deeper…

It was Gabriel that came first, overcome, apologies spilling from his lips as he spilled past Dean’s, Sam shushing him and Dean’s left hand tightening on his thigh. They carried him through, Castiel’s hips keeping the pace, his velvet gravel voice praising Dean, whispering dark endearments and stroking sigils of dominance and desire over the span of Dean’s ribs, grace dancing along Dean’s nerves and up through Gabriel and Sam…

The archangel was barely hard again and already on the brink, hypersensitive and nearly undone, when Sam shifted Dean’s right wrist and pushed in fast…

Gabriel came again with a shriek, every crystal on the island singing vibration from the explosive burst of the archangel’s grace. Castiel pulled Dean back as Sam was carried over the edge by it, one hand in Dean’s hair and the other wrapped around Dean’s heavy, untended arousal. Dean shouted and writhed, on his knees, Castiel’s hips slamming into his own and rocking him through that silk-steel grip too roughly to be anything but perfect.

“Come now, Dean.”

It was an order Dean could not disobey. Castiel’s name tore free as Dean fractured in his arms, Sam watching almost dazed from where he was wrapped around a still-trembling Gabriel as his brother shuddered and crumbled until only Castiel held him up.

If Sam had wondered whether or not Castiel had gotten off, the not-quite-slump of the angel’s frame as he slid free of Dean’s body was mute confirmation. Dean was boneless in his angel’s arms, his expression blankly, drowsily sated, and Sam reflexively kissed Gabriel’s temple as Castiel sank with his brother onto the warm stones.

“Bed,” Castiel murmured, keeping Dean tucked closely into the hollow of his shoulder. “Gabriel… brother…”

Dean made a half-hearted, nonsense sound as Gabriel managed the strength to snap his fingers, and Sam wrapped Gabriel tighter into his embrace as they sank into a soft silken nest. He could only manage the barest flicker of his eyelids, forcing his eyes open long enough to see Castiel nestling with Dean cradled protectively a few inches away, and then satiety and exhaustion claimed him.


	5. Paradise – Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see Part One for warnings, disclaimers and notes.

~ooooOOOoooo~

Safety. It was the first sensation that registered when Dean woke up. He was nested in smooth fabric and strong arms, the scent of stardust and angel musk carried on each indrawn breath and warmth from grace and morning sunlight seeping through him.

He remembered feeling this protected only one other time in his life: being held in his mother’s arms, her skin smelling of baking and Ivory soap, her heartbeat steady beneath his little ear and her belly half-swollen from Sam growing inside her. In those halcyon days, she’d let him take his naps with her while John worked, her energy drawn by her pregnancy and his youth requiring the extra sleep.

Dean wished Sam could have known what that was like. He’d tried to give a semblance of it to his baby brother, curling up around him to keep the nightmares away and giving up his own safety to be the protector so Sam could feel it. All the while wishing that their mother was there to give it to both of them.

He’d grown used to ignoring his own need to be safe. Feeling it again at long last, bundled in a silken bower between two Angels of the Lord with Sam close by, Dean wanted to never let it go. To never be without this again.

“You don’t have to.”

A smile curled the perfect bow of Dean’s lips, though he let his eyes remain closed. “How many times I gotta tell you ‘bout readin’ my brain, Cas?” There was no umbrage in his tone, and the Castiel responded by tucking him closer into the firm planes of the angel’s body. Heedless of Sam possibly being awake to witness it, Dean snuggled into the safety of Castiel’s arms, his stubbly jaw rubbing against the hollow of Cas’ shoulder.

“As often as you like, Dean; but when your entire being speaks, it is difficult not to listen.”

Dean gave a mild snort but otherwise didn’t argue the point. He felt too good, still muzzy from his beatific high of the previous night. His entire body felt looser, his skin more comfortable and his thoughts quieter. He was safe. The word pervaded his very being. He wasn’t exposed or vulnerable; he didn’t need to be in control or even make it look like he was.

“This vacation may be the best idea you’ve had in years,” he mumbled to Gabriel, who was entangled with Sam beside him.

“Glad you approve.” A shift and a shuffle, and then gentle lips were brushed over his shoulder just above Castiel’s brand. “You two never stop surprising us; you know that, right?”

“Gotta keep you interested somehow.”

The comment earned him a chastising nip to the shoulder, followed by a gentle kiss to the stung flesh. Castiel’s lips brushed against his temple in the same moment, his gravel velvet voice rubbing over Dean’s senses like a caress. “You know that we love you.”

Dean opened his eyes to Castiel’s serious face… when was it not, even in times of great fear or deep rage? It was so rare to see even a smile erase the eternal gravitas of his angel’s features. Castiel was a rock, unyielding and steady, offering a haven where Dean was protected… cherished…

And Gabriel… Gabriel was the wild. Unpredictable, devil-may-care, willing to drive all night just to chase the sunrise. If Castiel was safety, then Gabriel was freedom. And in a heartbeat, Dean knew it was the same for Sam.

The archangel was tucked securely between Sam’s larger frame and his own, fingers stroking gently along his bicep below the handprint Castiel had left there what felt like a lifetime ago. Dean shifted just slightly, so he could look up at Gabriel as well, a clear view of gold or lapis depending on which way he turned his head. Gabriel looked so… disarmed just now, as if he had no idea what to make of last night or Dean. He didn’t know what to say… didn’t know how to even start.

Gabriel’s smile was hesitant as Sam nuzzled into the back of his neck and Dean just looked up at him with large, questioning viridian eyes. “Dean…”

Before the archangel could finish, Dean reached up and covered those lips with his fingers. “No. We’re doing this. No options to back out, no ‘you don’t have to just because I want it’ Lifetime movie moments. Sammy and I already talked about this yesterday, and we ain’t precisely known for changing our minds once we’ve decided to do something. We started it last night and we’re doing it.”

“And no fair trying to talk us out of it,” Sam murmured behind him. “We want you to be happy, Gabriel.”

“What about you?” Gabriel retorted, looking at Castiel and the hunters in utter bewilderment.

“You think us being a family won’t make us happy?” Dean gave Gabriel his patented ‘I call bullshit’ face. “You think we don’t get it. We do. How many times we gonna have to say it before you catch on?”

There was a long pause. “This isn’t what most humans think of when they think about being a family,” Gabriel murmured.

“Most humans could use their horizons expanded,” Sam countered softly. “But that doesn’t matter. We’re what matter: the four of us in this room. We want this. We’re willing to do this… not for you, but _with_ you. There’s a difference.”

Gabriel looked at both humans, eyes wide, and then his gaze settled on his brother. Castiel gazed back, grace slotting and pulsing against his own, compassion and love and beckoning in the deep blue of his eyes. “What do you want, Gabriel?” he asked, the rough velvet of his voice low and encouraging.

A moment to absorb it, and then a smile split Gabriel’s face that was like sunbeams breaking through the clouds. “Breakfast,” he replied, voice resonating like trumpets, like victory. Like love.

Before anyone could ask, the archangel snapped as he rolled to face Sam, pressing the younger human back with one hand. Sam followed his urging without thought, a question in his eyes, until Gabriel was taking up a glass bottle of something viscous and dark that he proceeded to drizzle in a long line down the center of Sam’s chest.

Dean’s mouth went dry as he watched, unable to look away, as Gabriel’s long, talented tongue dragged slowly up the path he’d just made. Sam’s skin had pinkened from the heat of the liquid, his breath catching in his throat as Gabriel dripped patterns of thick raspberry syrup over the broad muscles of Sam’s chest and retraced them with his mouth.

In an effort to distract himself, needing to ignore the thrill that Sam’s tiny little moans were tripping through his blood, Dean shifted his attention to Castiel, leaning in and sucking sharply at the hollow of the angel’s throat. Castiel gasped, his weight shifting and flattening against his human, pressing eagerly against the knowing glide of callused palms and the comfortable planes of solid muscle.

Using the momentum, Dean shifted one leg and rolled them, putting Castiel on his back against Gabriel. Skin on skin contact drove a moan through Castiel’s lips and Gabriel couldn’t help nipping at the sensitive flesh above Sam’s navel, causing an echo that made Dean’s pulse throb wildly in his veins. “Hey… Gabe?” Dean couldn’t control the husky catch in his voice, the words vibrating across Castiel’s skin. “Pass some of that here, would ya?”

A deep chuckle and a snap, and Dean had a vial of his own blackberry syrup in his hand and a can of whipped cream nearby. Gabriel was wielding one of his own now, the cold of the white foam contrasting the heat of the fruit drizzle, and Dean could only smile at the brilliance of the archangel’s lascivious streak.

The first trace of the warm, sticky syrup had Castiel panting, Dean’s tongue taking its time to lap it away. His wanton seraph gave himself into Dean’s hands so easily, letting Dean do whatever he wished, long fingers sliding up into Dean’s hair, along the corded muscles of his arms, skirting the brand they’d left on him and sending spirals of need cascading under Dean’s skin.

Dean was all too aware of Gabriel’s slim back half-arched over Sam’s longer body, the wicked tongue in that too-clever mouth at work cleansing every drip and smear of sugar from Sam’s skin. The heat of Castiel’s flesh was making it thinner under his own tongue, dissolving the whipped topping into cream and sending bright purple rivulets of blackberry reduction in spidery lines over the angel’s pale limbs that Dean chased with the enthusiasm of a child eating a melting ice cream treat.

“Not a bad idea,” Gabriel murmured. Before Dean could ask what, there was a half-shout from Sam, and Dean was glancing up from Castiel to see…

See the long, taut, touchable lines of his brother’s naked flesh, arching in abandon under the attentions of the ArchHerald of God. Gabriel was trailing what looked like strawberry ice cream along Sam’s thigh, nimble fingers of his right hand clasping the treat’s wooden stick while the left bit into the edges of the frozen cream and then brushed over Sam’s nipples.

Jerking his attention back to the angel beneath him, Dean crushed their mouths together almost guiltily. He shouldn’t want to watch Gabriel taking Sam apart; Sam saying he wanted to watch Dean blow Gabriel last night had been part of the act. There shouldn’t be anything arousing about his brother’s throaty moans, nothing at all enticing about the strong, lean muscles flexing and leaping beneath Gabriel’s touch…

Castiel, the devious little seraph, knew him far too well. He nipped sharply up Dean’s jaw, along the shell of his ear, one hand slipping between them to wrap around the base of Dean’s erection just tightly enough to hold back the rising tide of Dean’s own need. “This is part of it, Dean,” the angel whispered in a voice that sent hot shivers over Dean’s every nerve. “It’s all right to look… to find them beautiful. They are.”

A convulsive shudder swept up Dean’s spine, and then Castiel was kissing under his jaw again, nudging his chin up with every press of his lips. “Look, Dean…”

Far too accustomed to obeying that voice, both out of love and self-preservation, Dean stopped balking and looked.

Gabriel was licking away the strawberry residue, nibbling the tender flesh of Sam’s thighs just often enough to make Sam’s entire body twitch in response. Sam’s hands were sunk like claws into the sheets, fisting them as Gabriel almost idly drove Sam mad with need. There was something raw and powerful in every line of Sam’s face that beckoned to Dean, made him want to lean in and press his lips to Sam’s jaw… to cause those wanton little cries in the back of Sam’s throat and lose himself in Sam’s passion…

The thought startled Dean, nearly shaking him from his haze just as Gabriel took Sam whole into his mouth. Gabriel’s right hand was between Sam’s legs, the archangel teasing him open, obviously savoring the sounds Sam made as much as Dean was. The suddenness of the gesture shocked the angel’s name from Sam’s lips and Dean felt a stab of jealousy he’d never admit to possessing.

His brother had never said his name with that much emotion. Even in the midst of their worst bouts, Dean had never heard Sam infuse so much into anything he’d said. More fiercely than anything in his life, Dean wanted to hear Sam call out his name with the same impassioned fervor that suffused his voice when he cried out the archangel’s.

Without warning, Castiel’s fingers smeared up through the thin lines Dean had painted across him in blackberry syrup but not yet cleansed away, a broad patch of purple trailing his hand. Dean didn’t have time to ask, his lust-fogged brain sluggish, before Castiel was tracing the syrup over Gabriel’s back, along the wing lines, and then leaning in to lap the skin clean. Gabriel moaned around Sam, which had Sam’s hand suddenly shooting out past Gabriel’s body, seeking something more solid than the sheets to grip, an anchor to keep him from bucking up into his lover’s sinfully hot mouth.

It was Dean’s arm he found.

Without thinking, Dean wrapped his fingers around Sam’s arm and held tight; he could feel Sam’s body vibrating, needing more, saw Sam biting nearly through his lip to keep from begging for it in front of his brother. Something in Dean cracked. “Sammy…”

The sound that broke in Sam’s throat was little more than a sob. “Please… oh, G-… Gabriel… _please_ …”

Slow, almost too gentle, Gabriel let his mouth slide away to brush warm, swollen lips over Sam’s hips. Dean lost his grip as Sam rolled when Gabriel’s hands guided the younger human over; Castiel squirmed against him, turning towards Gabriel and rolling his hips against Dean’s in a move that was pure sin. It pulled Dean back, focused him on the nape of Castiel’s sensitive neck, the tempting taper of the hips grinding back into his own.

When Dean watched Castiel nibble at the powerful muscle between the wing lines of Gabriel’s back, saw the way Gabriel’s spine arched up into the contact and his hands tugged Sam’s hips towards his own, he was firmly convinced that his steadfast little angel might just possibly be the kinkiest person in the bed.

He lost the thought as his own fingers found their way inside Castiel, coated in the viscous blackberry reduction and apparently working on their own volition. Castiel’s palms braced on Gabriel’s wing blades, the faint charge of grace in the air telling Dean that Castiel was holding Gabriel’s wings in. The whine ringing at the end of the long double moan as Gabriel pushed deep into Sam telling him that it was only making the skin Castiel’s mouth was busy molesting all the more sensitive.

Definitely kinkiest. And possibly sneakiest.

Castiel’s hips canted back, wordlessly inviting Dean in, and Dean was more than happy to comply. The rock forward on the first thrust had Castiel’s erection rubbing between Gabriel’s cheeks, and the archangel pushed back against him eagerly with every slow draw from Sam’s body. Sam’s hands were braced against an invisible wall that kept him from falling out of bed, knees drawn up to his chest, letting Gabriel set the rhythm he wanted and just holding on for the ride.

Dean let his eyes drift closed, luxuriating in the slick tight grip of his angel’s body, the way Castiel’s lithe form fitted itself so perfectly against his own, making it easy for him to wrap his arms around Castiel and just tuck him in, hips undulating together in a series of short strokes that tagged Castiel’s prostate about every third push and sending little hitches through the angel’s already shallow breath. It was almost easy to forget, for a moment, that Sam and Gabriel were really close enough to touch.

Until Gabriel practically growled from the other side of his angel: “Dammit, Cas… quit being such an ass-tease and _get in me already_ …”

A warm chuckle accompanied Dean’s eyes snapping open. Castiel had been busy while Dean had been sunk in sensation, coating his arousal in syrup and letting it ride Gabriel’s cleft as Dean rode him, all the while continuing to lavish soft sucking kisses and teasing little bites and deft swipes of his tongue over Gabriel’s back, torturing the erogenous zone at the base of where his wings manifested.

Just across Gabriel, Sam was quite literally wrecked from the onslaught Gabriel had unleashed in response. Shoulders sported dark purple suck marks and bright red weals from sharp angelic teeth, knuckles white from pressing hard into the invisible wall that kept this from becoming a farce, mouth open and slack as tiny, punched-out sounds seemed to be all he was capable of forming whenever Gabriel’s hips slapped sharply against his own.

“Whatever you desire, brother.” Before anyone could react, Castiel was pulling away from Dean and pushing into Gabriel while Gabriel sank into Sam. Sam arched back into Gabriel with a long cry, one hand reaching back to slide into Gabriel’s sunset gold hair as his knees hit the barrier. Wedged between power and angel, the weight of two now behind each thrust, Sam lost any chance of keeping his responses quiet for Dean’s sake.

When Dean realized that’s what Sam had been doing, something sharp flared in him that he refused to identify. His reach put his hand just brushing the edge of Sam’s hip as he got with the program and matched his cadence to the angels’, putting the inertia of a third into every lazy press against Sam’s core.

Sam was fisting and tugging at Gabriel’s hair, an incoherent half-sobbed gasp breaking in his throat when he finally came without Gabriel ever needing to touch him.

The tight, rippling clutch of heat was enough to light a chain reaction, catching the lovers in turn and shattering their rhythm as they struggled to keep going just a little longer… Castiel lasted a few strokes longer than Gabriel, but Sam’s panting moans as he came down combined with Castiel’s searing heat and unbound cry, and Dean was gone from the moment he felt the first flutters around him.

When there was enough blood redistributed in his body for Dean to finally raise his head without getting dizzy, he opened his eyes to see Gabriel easing Sam out of bed. His brother looked blissed out and trembly as a new colt, and Gabriel was murmuring encouragingly to him about a bath to clean up before having some real food.

Castiel was smiling at Dean. “You have no idea how much this means to Gabriel,” he informed his human softly. “Or to me.”

Words wouldn’t come, choked back by emotion and the aftermath of one of the most intense orgasms Dean had ever experienced. Slipping out as Castiel rolled, Dean stroked gentle fingers down the angel’s cheek. “A bath sounds pretty good to me, too,” he finally managed.

A low chuckle, and Castiel brushed two fingers across Dean’s temple. Quite without fanfare, they were suddenly immersed in a tub of warm water approximately the size of a small swimming pool. Dean’s arms were still around his angel, and Castiel’s lips were still wearing the tiny upturns at the corners that betrayed his more devious nature. “Anything you wish, beloved.”

* * *

Despite the island’s many features, built solely for the entertainment of its occupants at any given time, the four lovers didn’t make it far out of bed for the rest of the day.

Bathed and refreshed, still vaguely euphoric from their angels’ attentions during said process, the hunters nestled into the silk sheets, Dean wrapping around Castiel and Sam snuggling Gabriel. A somewhat more substantial breakfast of exotic fruit and honey-dipped bread was whipped up by Gabriel with a lazy snap, and the lovers fed one another with tender gestures and quiet, bemused laughter that spoke volumes about how much this respite had been needed.

But Dean and Sam kept at least one angel between them at all times. Gabriel noticed, but he was reluctant to look for ways to encourage them to touch. This joining, whether it lasted beyond the island sexually or not, was too fragile in his opinion, and he too skittish of losing the ground they’d gained, to press for more.

Castiel had no such reservations. He had challenged the First of the Angels and won the day. He had fought his way into the very blackest depths of the Pit and rescued the Righteous Man from becoming a demon. He had chosen love over destiny, and in finding the former he had helped rewrite the latter.

_This_ was a barrier easily overcome.

Sam was wrapped in his arms at present, chuckling between kisses as he listened to Dean and Gabriel debating the exclusion of Starship from the Impala’s music collection. “They’re way too much alike sometimes, aren’t they?” Sam asked just a bit louder than necessary, ensuring that both elder Winchester and elder angel heard him.

The corners of Castiel’s mouth tugged as he kissed Sam again, enjoying the feel of the younger human’s naked body wrapped almost casually around his own. “Yes, they are. Fortunately, they’re both physically attractive and proficient at sex.”

Dean blushed crimson even as he matched Gabriel’s protesting noise. Sam pulled a mock-disappointed face and blinked up at Castiel with wide hazel eyes. “Are you saying I’m not?”

“Not at all,” Castiel replied, letting just a tiny gleam enter his blue eyes. “You and Dean are well-matched in your sexual skills. In fact, I have little doubt you could both take me at the same time with only marginal awkwardness.”

Sam went still beneath him. Gabriel’s eyes were keen as gilt blades. Dean was staring, his mouth hanging open. “You… we… um…”

“If you wished to,” Castiel added. He glanced at Gabriel only briefly, feeling the almost savagely hopeful swirl in the archangel’s grace. “I found a discussion of the technique during my research on our first day here, and I must admit that I found the notion… appealing.”

Castiel’s name half-stuttered out of Dean; Gabriel cut in. “You’re proving the old adage about the quiet ones, little bro. You sure you wanna give this a try?”

The gaze Castiel returned was level and determined. “If Sam and Dean are agreeable, then yes.”

Breath rushed out of Dean, his viridian eyes blown wide. Gabriel’s fingers stroked down Dean’s arm as a tremor of want vibrated through Sam, the younger human’s lips parted and his breathing shallow. Almost without thinking, Sam looked at his brother. “Dean?”

Dean was frozen, his mouth starting to form words that wouldn’t come. He wasn’t looking at Sam, only at Castiel, something bright and close to fear in his eyes.

Gabriel caught on before Castiel could, less concerned than his younger brother about giving the Winchesters privacy in their own minds. “I’ve done this before,” he assured Dean quietly. “You won’t hurt him; I won’t let you. You won’t hurt either of them.”

Understanding washed through him, and Castiel reached out, touching the line of Dean’s jaw and letting a soothing tendril of his grace unfurl through the contact. “Dean… come here.”

A tremor, almost as if he were checking himself before moving too quickly, Dean shifted towards Castiel, drawn by the magnetic calm of those trusting lapis eyes. Eyes that had seen him at his very worst, and had not looked away. Gabriel was right there behind him, hands stroking softly over Dean’s ribs, up his back, skimming his shoulders. Reminding him that they were all here. All ready to catch him if he fell.

Sam shifted beneath Castiel as their lips met, his mouth tracing pathways of his own down the back of Castiel’s neck. Gabriel was there, too, moving so he could touch all of them, satin lips whispering and fingertips flickering as if uncertain where he wanted to touch first. Sam turned his head for a moment, drawing Gabriel into an open, soothing kiss that let the archangel’s nervous energy bleed away.

By the time Sam returned his attentions to Castiel’s pale, smooth skin, the angel had lowered Dean to the mattress, drawing quiet groans of want from Dean with every touch. Gabriel and Sam followed, the archangel’s grace weaving through them all, a low hint of lilies carried on the breeze. The touch opened Castiel’s wings, a slow unfurling of raven black feathers that drew both Winchesters’ fingers in reverent fascination.

Castiel keened, a low sound of surprised want, at the feel of his feathers being stroked from both sides by their hunters’ fingers. Gabriel’s grace curled against his own, flickering brushes of glowing time that seemed to be everywhere at once until every touch seemed to send shocks racing under his skin. Dean moaned when the angel’s fingers touched his brand, currents of grace finding a connection and tripping across his nerves, sending his hips arching up into Castiel’s. Sam was right there, weight trapping Castiel tighter against the motion than he normally would be, fingers wrapping around Castiel’s thighs and pressing them wider, bending him closer into Dean’s touch before returning his attention to the onyx wings that fluttered under his every caress.

They might have lingered forever, lost in touch and grace and hazy abandon, had Gabriel not been there. Deft fingers slipped between them, teasing their way to the tight pucker of muscle beneath Castiel’s hips. The younger angel gasped and canted his hips towards the touch, moaning as Sam framed them with his larger hands, his lips teasing at the space between Castiel’s wings along his spine.

Dean’s fingers couldn’t stay out of those feathers, enraptured by the contrast of dark down and pale skin, the way every stroke and tug through the quills made the angel shake and gasp and flex his fingers into Dean’s skin. He watched in rapt adoration as Castiel’s eyes flew wide when Gabriel’s fingers breached him, prepping him with smooth, steady strokes that nearly vibrated with grace. The angel stared down at him, the lapis blue of his eyes almost invisible from how much the pupils had dilated, and Dean reached up to frame Castiel’s face with his hands, leaning up to kiss him.

Gabriel’s fingers scissored deeper and Castiel mewled into Dean’s mouth, nerves frayed and body aching for more than Gabriel alone could give. Without needing to be told, Dean reached blindly for Gabriel’s hand, for lubricant to coat his fingers before they slid between Castiel’s legs, carefully easing in beside Gabriel’s, Castiel startled; Sam’s mouth brushed up to his nape, a soft hushing sound whispering past his lips as his hands smoothed up the compact muscle of Castiel’s chest.

Slow. Steady. Careful not to push too fast, Dean and Gabriel worked in tandem until Castiel’s muscles were as pliable as they would become, tiny sounds that might have been pleas falling from Castiel’s every breath. Sam’s hands came back to Castiel’s hips when Gabriel murmured Sam’s name, and Dean ran a lube-slick hand up his own erection as thoroughly as he dared before lacing that hand into Sam’s on Castiel’s hip and guiding the angel down.

A long, rolling moan broke in Castiel’s throat, the feeling of Dean being buried to the core no less exquisite now than it ever was. For all that their brothers were here, for all that they were more whole when they were all four together, Dean was still his Righteous Man. Still the soul he had fought his way through Hell to save. Still the love he had turned his face from God to choose, time and again. It was a bond too profound to truly share with anyone, even those so much a part of them as Gabriel and Sam. Forged of Heavenly steel and Hellfire, unbreakable beyond the ending of the world.

He bent low, brushing his open mouth against Dean’s for no other reason than want of contact. Dean accepted the kiss eagerly, hands gliding over skin and feathers until they could tangle in the perpetually mussed waves of Castiel’s hair. He felt Gabriel’s fingers just teasing the edge of flesh where they were joined, Castiel shivering against him. “You still wanna let Sammy in, Cas?” Dean asked, voice purring seduction against Castiel’s mouth. “You can still back out, you know.”

“Please.” Castiel breathed the word out, palms flat against Dean’s chest. “Please.”

Easing Castiel up, Dean propped himself up on his elbows and brushed soothing kisses across Castiel’s chest as Gabriel’s fingers worked back in, slicker and slower than before. Castiel nearly whimpered at the burn, bracing against Dean’s solid frame for stability. Sam was whispering in Castiel’s ear, soft words of encouragement and praise, as he slicked himself as carefully as he could before easing in alongside Dean.

Gabriel’s hands were on his younger brother in a heartbeat, grace pulsing as the too-wide stretch threatened Castiel’s calm. It relaxed him enough to let Sam slip-shove even deeper, nearly as deep as Dean, stealing Sam’s breath away when he was pressed as far as he could go.

Dean was stroking his hands up Castiel’s thighs, soothing the quivering muscles. Sam’s hands still framed Castiel’s hips, brushed occasionally by Dean’s gentle caresses. Gabriel was still on the edges, kisses and touches and pulsing grace, not allowing the endorphins racing through their blood to slacken even for a moment.

Castiel managed to turn his head, one hand tremulously separating from Dean’s body to slide into Gabriel’s hair and draw him in for a long, deep wet kiss. Gabriel’s hands reached out, each finding a human, balancing as best he could without disrupting the fragile tableau.

Sam and Dean’s hands reached up, catching his arms, keeping him close as Castiel flexed his thighs, pressing up just enough to drag long moans out of all three.

Long, slow burn; too heavy press-drag from one moment to the next, threatening to break them all to pieces if they tried to move too quickly. Gabriel holding them all together, keeping his promise to Dean as best he could, refusing to let go even when the other three seemed so wrapped in themselves that he couldn’t be sure they knew he was still there.

Except that Dean’s hand tightened on his every time his hips shifted even a fraction, needing Gabriel to gauge the choking, obscene cries that caught in Castiel’s throat to be sure they weren’t more pain than pleasure. Sam was gripping him hard enough to bruise, keeping his balance only because Gabriel was there, overwhelmed by the feel of Dean against him inside the impossibly tight pressure that refused to give more than one jagged, gasping inch at a time.

And then Castiel is whining, keening again, the ringing edge of his true voice cracking through the sound as he shoved against them, needing more, unsteady and breathless. They didn’t know whose hands held him up, identity lost in the middle; Castiel reached down to stroke Gabriel’s untouched length, fingers jerking almost too rough as the ragged thread of his control snapped and he was coming, sharp white blaze overtaking his senses.

Dean caught Sam’s face only seconds before his own orgasm took him, the wrecked twist of total abandon as beautiful on his brother as it was on the angel, searing itself into his memory…

When the world righted itself, Sam was easing away, Castiel falling into Dean as his oversensitive muscles protested the loss. Dean caught the angel, shifting just enough to slip free himself without dislodging the angel from the safe cradle of his body and whispering soothing endearments into the dark silk of Castiel’s hair. “Sam…” It felt almost harsh to say anything above a whisper. “Gabriel… he didn’t…”

“I’m fine, Dean.” Gabriel was sprawled mere inches away, reaching out to brush his fingers over Dean’s hand and through Castiel’s hair. “It’s okay…”

Turning his head, Dean fixed Gabriel with a solemn, somehow loving gaze. “Nobody gets left out.”

Gabriel visibly startled, his expression shifting into something open and very near tears, and then dissolving when Sam’s lips wrapped around his still-aching need.

Dean watched for a moment, taking in the play of Sam’s throat muscles as he fellated the archangel with no small amount of skill, and then turned back to Castiel. “You okay, Cas?”

Castiel nodded slowly, little more than a slow rub of his forehead against the hollow of Dean’s shoulder. The area was sensitive from years of bracing rifles against it, and Dean shivered reflexively. “Just… give me a moment,” the angel finally managed, his rough velvet voice sounding utterly _destroyed_ …

The archangel was whining at the end of each husky moan, and it wasn’t long before those whines were Sam’s name, chanted as Gabriel came long and hard down the younger human’s throat. Dean suppressed a chuckle, nuzzling his angel instead as he rolled their bodies closer to their brothers’. “Take all the time you need, Cas… we’re not going anywhere.”


	6. Paradise – Part Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see Part One for warnings, disclaimers and notes.

~ooooOOOoooo~

The sun had long set, and the moon glowed bright and full in the evening sky. Long hours of lazy intimacy and succulent delicacies left a sweet lassitude seeping into the bones of both men and angels. They rested together, limbs entwined, soaking in the sensation of just being together with nothing hanging over their heads.

They knew they couldn’t stay forever. Already it was starting to slip into the edges of their thoughts: the idle wonder of how this would sustain itself in the outside world, of what effect it would have on healing wounds that still flared when stresses ran high. But here and now, smooth skin and soft smiles and whispered endearments were all that mattered…

That, and the connection, yet incomplete, that hummed beneath their skin.

It was a subtle thing, but vitally important. The flock must be one, each for the other, able to listen and lead, follow and understand. No one more important than the others. None left out or behind.

Nothing had been formally discussed between humans and angels. Sam and Dean had talked the process over, or what Sam knew of it from glimpses into Gabriel’s thoughts. No declaration had been made of who should take the lead when. It flowed organically, like everything else between them had.

But Dean had yet to take the lead, and it was like a splinter in their minds, a seal not yet made. Because Dean was afraid, even now, to take what he wanted for his own.

Gabriel idly mouthed his collarbone, humming contentedly. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know,” he murmured. “It’s right there, behind your eyes.”

“What is?” Dean ran a slow hand down the archangel’s spine; his fingers brushed someone’s… Castiel’s from the shape, and they tangled with his for a moment at the small of Gabriel’s back.

“You have to take point,” Sam reminded him gently. “And even I can feel how much you want to.”

For a long moment, Dean was silent; he knew they were right, and he’d been the one to start this, after all. But what he wanted, what he would ask if he were do what was needful… Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to look at himself again if he went that far. Didn’t know if it would destroy this fragile thing they were trying to build rather than finishing it.

Sam shifted from where he lounged curled around Castiel’s boneless sprawl, and caught his brother’s gaze. “Whatever it is, Dean, all you have to do is ask. That’s the whole point.”

No words formed. No words could. Dean gazed up into sherry hazel eyes… eyes he could map his entire life by. Eyes that had always held so much…

Wide and curious, taking in every image presented in a wholly new world. The first flash of recognition, of knowing his brother, though he could not yet speak a word.

Filled with questions, then with tears, when he asked for a mother that would never, could never come when he called.

Wide with fear from nightmares only Dean could soothe. Thirsting for knowledge that would only hurt him, but that only Dean was there to give.

Rage and sorrow. Need for understanding. Compassion and determination. A thousand emotions, scattered like sparkling grains of sand across his memory. More than Gabriel or Bobby or Castiel, Sam was the only constant in Dean’s life… the one thing he counted on even when Destiny conspired to make that impossible.

This joining between them had awakened hungers born of close quarters, riotous new hormones and emotional isolation. No anonymous tryst had ever banished the impulses that woke him, shaking and rock hard, for far too many years; only four years’ separation forced between them by Sam’s college dreams had allowed them to be buried. He’d classified them as tricks played by his subconscious, dreams with no meaning. But they were rising from their burial places again, and Dean wanted to salt and burn them. To forget they ever existed. To ignore what they meant.

But those sherry eyes were always too good at seeing what he tried to hide, if only by the way he tried to hide it. Holding his blue-green gaze, Sam’s eyes went wide in the instant he understood that there was one thing, no matter how safe they might all be, that Dean would never ask to be given.

“Oh.” The syllable dropped from Sam’s lips, faint and startled and wondering. Dean flinched and looked away, unwilling to watch the expression in those eyes change from surprise to revulsion. Unwilling to lose the center of his world.

“Oh.” A hand framed his face, too large to be anyone but Sam’s. Dean pressed into it on instinct, needing the comfort he always found in Sam’s presence, in the touches that grew fewer and farther between as years passed. He wanted more than he had any right to ask…

“Dean.” That gentle voice, beckoning to him. Coaxing him to open his eyes. To look, and be unafraid of what he would find. “Dean…”

Slowly, his eyes opened, meeting Sam’s sherry gaze.

No revulsion. No hesitation. Not even a question. Only the compassion they always held, comfort and love and trust that was sometimes too much to bear… and permission, desire even, for Dean to ask what he wanted…

The words still wouldn’t come. They refused, censoring themselves after so long being choked forcibly back. It didn’t really matter. Dean had never really been a word guy anyway.

His hands reached up, catching Sam’s face, and drew those familiar lips down to his own. Sam melted into him, barely aware that Castiel had moved to let the brothers get closer, pressing his longer body into Dean’s as tightly as he could.

It felt like coming home.

Vaguely, they registered the feel of Gabriel stroking Dean’s hip, of Castiel brushing kisses of his own down Sam’s spine. The world had narrowed to the two Winchester brothers, exploring each other with hungry kisses and gentle hands, seeking to learn by touch alone what they had only glimpsed for so long.

Dean lost himself in it. Let himself drown in the scent and taste and feel of his brother. Sam fit perfectly against his body, all flat planes and sleek muscle that flexed so temptingly under his fingers. Dean couldn’t stop touching him, half-expecting to feel the awkward, gangly teenager Sam had been. Not the virile adult he’d become, whose thighs were slipping down to press against his flanks and squeeze with deliberate intent.

“Impatient,” Dean murmured, the word nearly lost as Sam drew Dean’s lower lip between his own, inviting his tongue to dip between them.

“Wanted you for years,” Sam confessed, voice husky and almost uncertain. “You were the first person I dreamed about…”

The quiet declaration lit through Dean’s blood like wildfire, and he was rolling Sam down into the mattress before he could stop to think, intent on taking what was his… what had always been his…

They’d been making love, on and off, all day. Dean’s fingers reached between Sam’s thighs as they fell apart, finding Sam still wet from the attentions of both angels over the last several hours. Two fingers slid deep, easily hooking to find Sam’s prostate, a bright grin stealing over his face when Sam arched wantonly under him and cried out his name.

And then Gabriel was there, kissing Dean’s grinning lips. It pulled Dean’s attention away, just long enough to register that Gabriel was on his hands and knees for Castiel, the seraph already pressing deep into his elder brother.

“How do you want us, Dean?” Honey-amber eyes were bright, voice promising every filthy desire either human could wish to indulge. Castiel shifted, drawing a deep groan from the archangel, reminding Dean of his presence.

It eased the territoriality, but only slightly. They were his flock now, his family. They had the right to touch, just as he did.

“Take care of him,” Dean instructed quietly. He kissed Gabriel again, then bent and kissed Sam, long and slow, pressing the thick throb of his arousal against Sam’s and rocking his hips just a fraction. Sam arched, moaning, near to begging, as Dean brought him to the very edge before pulling and prodding until Sam was in the position he wanted.

It wasn’t quite the same as how they started. Dean had Sam on his knees, hands braced against the wall behind the bed, Dean’s hands covering his own to steady himself after making sure Sam was open and slick and relaxed. It put Gabriel’s head in perfect position to address Sam’s arousal with his mouth, letting Castiel’s hips set the pace and just brushing the heat of his mouth over the leaking head of Sam’s need.

Dean pressed in, savoring every inch of the slow, smooth drive, the way Sam quivered like a plucked bowstring in his embrace. He’d never allowed himself to think about Sam being this tight, especially after being well-sexed for most of the day. Never let himself contemplate the oven-like heat of Sam’s body, or the way his moans all ended in tiny little cries as Dean rocked back slowly and pushed in hard, catching Sam’s prostate with every thrust.

There was no question that they wouldn’t last long. All four had spent the day building from one orgasm to the next, and it wasn’t taking much to set off man or angel. Sam was pushing back into every thrust of Dean’s hips, pleading for more as Gabriel’s tongue teased the head of his erection, suction and pressure waxing and waning with every stroke of Castiel’s hips.

“Dean…” Sam’s voice was thready, overcome with too much all at once, needing what Dean had never had the words to offer… needing to feel Dean fall with him…

“Easy, Sammy,” Dean murmured. “I’m with you… I’m right here with you… Sammy… my Sam…”

Sam’s world dissolved, Dean’s name a half-shriek on his tongue as he erupted between Gabriel’s lips. Dean followed a few strokes later, letting his brother’s climax engulf him, his weight collapsing against the broad expanse of Sam’s back and anchoring to the feel of his brother in his arms.

Slow, as if in a dream, Dean let his weight shift away from Sam, sliding free of Sam’s body. A cry of loss escaped his little brother even as he was turning Sam into him, raining tiny kisses over Sam’s face as they dropped back onto the bed, a tangle of limbs and exhaustion, and Dean was rubbing soft circles over Sam’s back with his hand while Sam’s lips reflexively scattered kisses over Dean’s shoulder.

They were only peripherally aware that Castiel had brought Gabriel to orgasm only a few moments after their own. Conscious of the way Castiel spooned behind his brother when he reached his own release, pressing Gabriel as close as he could into Sam’s back. Gabriel’s arms wrapped around Sam from behind, tangling with Dean’s, and Castiel ran soft fingers through Sam’s walnut waves as the humans drifted back towards sleep.

* * *

Dawn brushed faint caresses of light across Dean’s eyes. He woke to feel Sam in the same position they’d fallen asleep in, Sam’s head tucked under his chin as comfortably as on any pillow and Gabriel wrapped around him from behind. The archangel was awake, unsurprisingly, and his eyes were glowing with a radiant kind of joy Dean didn’t think he’d ever seen before.

They were a flock now. A family in angelic terms as well as human ones. Gabriel had a right to be happy. They all did.

“You, too,” Gabriel murmured, admonishing in a whisper before Dean’s thoughts could wander too far. “You’re part of us now, Dean.”

They would have to leave here soon. A few days, no more, before the responsibilities of the real world would demand their return. But for the moment, just for this moment, Dean’s only responsibility was to Sam and Castiel and Gabriel. His only job to make sure that they were happy and well-sated and knew that they were loved with every fiber of his being.

It was the job he’d been born to do, and for once, Dean didn’t think he wasn’t good enough to do it. Loving Sammy had never been hard, and making room for the angels to join him was far easier than Dean might have expected.

What surprised him was how easily they’d made room for him in return. He could feel it now, with the flock complete. There was a sense of unity, of pieces being made into one whole picture. Love woven between them, braiding them together. Bonds entered willing and conscious that not even they could break.

Maybe, just maybe, Fate was rewarding them for rewriting the Apocalypse.

Stranger things had happened.

A smile tugged at Dean’s lips, and he pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of Sam’s head. “Yeah… I know.”


End file.
